Dual Factory Two Factories under One Roof

From engineering to series production: outsourcing solutions from a single source. Supported by over 220 employees, Stoppani Metal Systems in the Bern region of Switzerland covers the entire value chain in contract manufacturing and assembly.

For Stoppani’s production in Switzerland to be competitive for customers, it is essential that it is operated fully automatically. The goal was to completely digitalize planning, storage, intralogistics, tool changing, production, and quality control to reduce costs by approximately 35 percent.

Integrating bending and cutting cells with the warehouse, Bystronic designed fully automatic, digital production. Furthermore, existing and new machines from other suppliers could be additionally integrated fully automatically into the complete solution. This allowed Stoppani to make great progress toward a “dual factory.”

Collaboratively, a material and data flow was developed to meet Stoppani’s requirements. Based on this, existing production was expanded into additional production halls. Stoppani can now consider incorporating further process steps into the Smart Factory with automation.

From the vision to implementation: Storage was designed such that modular expansion will be possible in later stages. A customer-specific layout for the bending cell was worked out to enable a warehouse connection. The idea of the “dual factory” can thus be pursued further, and the next stages of expansion can be undertaken.

One challenge was in designing and commissioning one of the first bending cells according to customer specifications and on schedule. In parallel, machines from Bystronic and other suppliers were integrated fully automatically into the complete solution. The project steps could be successfully implemented thanks to close collaboration.