Heavy machinery

Skilled labor shortage and knowledge gaps
A shortage of experienced welders and robot programmers makes it difficult to maintain throughput and consistent quality. Much of the production knowledge remains personnel-dependent, leading to variability and longer ramp-up times for new products.

High product mix and ramp-up pressure
Heavy equipment manufacturing is often high-mix, low-volume (HMLV). Frequent product changes, engineered-to-order designs and late CAD updates such as added welds increase programming effort and slow down production ramp-up.

Quality inconsistency in complex welding
Large and heavy parts with many repetitive welds, multipass welding, complex seam shapes and difficult reachability create a high risk of variation. Maintaining repeatable quality across different operators and shifts is a constant challenge.

Fixture and design-for-manufacturing challenges
Designing fixtures for big weldments is time-consuming and costly. Late design changes can require rework of tooling and layouts. Increasing modularity in product designs, as well as the adoption of PMI and model-based engineering, adds another layer of coordination between design and production.

Low robot utilization in high-mix low-volume production
Although robotics adoption is increasing across welding and downstream processes, many manufacturers struggle with low robot utilization. Manual, teach-pendant programming is slow and ties up production equipment, limiting the benefits of automation.

Fragmented robot software ecosystems
A mix of robot brands in the same facility often means multiple proprietary programming environments. Generic offline programming tools are frequently sold by process, and post-processors add cost and complexity, making standardization difficult in modular production setups.

Integrating multiple technologies
Modern production cells combine robotics, positioners, fixtures, and inspection systems. Coordinating these technologies and validating workflows before commissioning is challenging without digital simulation.

Limits of automatic weld detection
Automatic weld detection works well for simple parts but is less reliable for the large, complex geometries common in yellow goods manufacturing. Engineers still need flexible tools to define and optimize weld paths accurately.

Plan and validate robot cells, conveyor systems and material flow digitally before physical commissioning. Simulation ensures robots, positioners and intralogistics work seamlessly, reducing errors and setup time.

Create and test welding and assembly paths offline to cut programming time by more than half compared with manual teach-pendant programming. This enables faster ramp-up of new production lines and reduces downtime.

Simulate multi-pass welding, complex seam geometries and large weldments to ensure consistent, high-quality results across product variants. Virtual validation minimizes trial-and-error on the shop floor.

Pre-program robots and validate processes in a digital environment to ensure production readiness from day one. This shortens commissioning time and reduces initial production errors.

Use simulation to evaluate production layouts, identify bottlenecks, test “what-if” scenarios and optimize cycle times. This helps manufacturers improve throughput, resource utilization and responsiveness to disruptions.

Validate control logic, robot coordination and integration with PLCs and positioners in a virtual environment before physical deployment. This ensures the full production system performs as designed and reduces on-site debugging.