An Indonesian injection molding factory doubled its production capacity after introducing Zhiyi servo robotic arms

An Indonesian injection molding factory doubled its production capacity after introducing Zhiyi servo Robotic Arms.

In today's increasingly competitive Southeast Asian manufacturing landscape, labor shortages, low production efficiency, and fluctuating product qualification rates have become core bottlenecks hindering the development of Indonesian manufacturing enterprises. An Indonesian factory specializing in injection molding of home appliance casings had long faced challenges such as high manual labor intensity, unstable production cycles, and long order delivery times. After introducing servo robotic arm solutions from Zhejiang Zhiyi Intelligent Robotics, the company achieved a leap in production efficiency, ultimately doubling its production capacity.

I. Case Background: The Production Challenges and Transformation Needs of an Indonesian Factory

Established in 2015, this Indonesian factory primarily provides customized injection molding casing production for well-known home appliance brands in Southeast Asia, including refrigerator door casings and washing machine control panel bases. With the continued growth in demand in the home appliance market, factory orders have been increasing year by year. However, the drawbacks of the original production model have become increasingly apparent: High labor dependence and difficulty in filling gaps: Core production processes rely on manual labor for tasks such as molded part removal, deburring, and sorting. Each production line requires 3-4 workers working in shifts. In recent years, the demand for labor in Indonesia's manufacturing industry has surged, making it difficult to recruit skilled workers. Furthermore, the staff turnover rate is as high as 15%, directly leading to frequent production line shutdowns due to material shortages and difficulties in executing production plans.

Low production efficiency and large cycle time fluctuations: Manual operation has physiological limitations. The average part removal cycle of a single Injection Molding Machine is 25 seconds, and the cycle time fluctuates by 5-8 seconds depending on worker skill and fatigue. Simultaneously, manual sorting is prone to missed inspections and mis-sorting, resulting in a rework rate as high as 8%, further reducing overall production efficiency.

Rising cost pressures and shrinking profit margins: Local labor costs in Indonesia are increasing by approximately 10% annually. Coupled with hidden costs such as rework losses and order delays due to insufficient capacity, factory profit margins are continuously narrowing. To cope with market competition, the company urgently needs to overcome development bottlenecks through automation upgrades.

II. Cooperation Opportunity: Why Choose Zhiyi Servo Robots?

During the automation equipment selection phase, the Indonesian factory compared industrial Robot Solutions from multiple international brands, but ultimately chose to cooperate with Zhiyi. The core reason is that Zhiyi's products and services precisely match the factory's actual needs: Strong product adaptability, perfectly suited to injection molding scenarios: Zhiyi has been deeply involved in the field of injection molding machine automation for many years. Its servo robots are specifically designed for injection molding production scenarios and can accurately match the operational needs of injection molding machines of different tonnages. For the factory's large appliance casing products (with a maximum single weight of 8kg), Zhiyi recommends a combination solution of the WKG-1000 model three-axis single-arm single-segment servo robot and a five-axis dual-arm double-section servo robot. The three-axis servo robot has a maximum load capacity of 50kg, easily handling the handling needs of complex molds and large products, fully meeting the factory's production requirements.

Backed by technical strength, quality and safety are guaranteed: Zhiyi's servo robots have passed ISO9001 international quality system certification and CE certification. The products have undergone rigorous high and low temperature and continuous operation tests to ensure stable operation in Indonesia's tropical climate. Furthermore, Zhiyi holds 13 utility model patents. Its servo drive system boasts fast response speed and a repeatability accuracy of ±0.02mm, effectively reducing product scratches and deformation, and improving product yield.

Outstanding customization capabilities, adaptable to local production scenarios: Considering the factory's existing injection molding machine brands (including Japanese, European, and local brands), the Zhiyi team provided a customized adaptation solution. By adjusting the robotic arm's installation interface and motion trajectory programming, seamless integration with different injection molding machine models was achieved, eliminating the need for large-scale modifications to the existing production line and reducing upgrade costs. Simultaneously, for the factory's multi-variety, small-batch production mode, the Zhiyi robotic arm supports rapid program switching, reducing changeover time from 2 hours to 15 minutes.

Global service support, addressing concerns about remote maintenance: For the core concern of cross-border cooperation—after-sales service—Zhiyi's global 24-hour technical support system provides strong support. From initial on-site demonstrations and technical training to later installation, commissioning, and troubleshooting, the Zhiyi professional team provides full support, ensuring equipment maintenance response time does not exceed 4 hours through a combination of online remote guidance and on-site service from local partners, completely eliminating the factory's concerns about remote equipment maintenance.

III. Implementation Process: Customized Solution Implementation and Adaptation

Preliminary Research and Solution Design: The Zhiyi team conducted on-site visits to the Indonesian factory, conducting detailed research on the injection molding machine parameters, product specifications, and existing production processes for each production line. Based on the factory's core objective of "increasing production capacity by over 50% and reducing labor costs," a combined application solution of "three-axis + five-axis" servo robots was developed: WKG-1000 three-axis single-arm servo robots were configured on 6 small injection molding machines (50-120 tons) for handling the picking and simple sorting of lightweight products; five-axis dual-arm dual-section servo robots were configured on 4 large injection molding machines (160-300 tons) to achieve integrated operations for picking, deburring, and precise sorting of heavy products.

Equipment Installation and Personnel Training: According to the factory's production plan, the Zhiyi team completed the installation and commissioning of 10 servo robots in phases, taking only 15 days and without significantly impacting existing production. Meanwhile, a three-day specialized training program was conducted for factory technicians and operators, covering robotic arm programming, daily maintenance, and troubleshooting of common faults to ensure that factory employees could quickly get started. The training adopted a "theoretical teaching + hands-on practice" model, supplemented by multilingual operation manuals to overcome language barriers.

Trial Operation and Optimization: During the one-month trial operation phase, the Zhiyi team monitored equipment operation data in real time and optimized the robotic arm's movement trajectory and operating parameters based on actual production feedback. For example, to address stability issues when handling large products, the gripping force and lifting speed of the robotic arm were adjusted; to address the efficiency issues of program switching for multi-product production, the operation logic of the programming interface was optimized, further improving production continuity.

IV. Implementation Results: Doubling Capacity and Significantly Reducing Costs

After six months of stable operation, Zhiyi's servo robotic solution brought about a comprehensive production transformation to the Indonesian factory, with the following core results: Doubling of Capacity: The servo robotic arm completely replaced manual processes such as picking and sorting parts. The cycle time of a single injection molding machine was reduced from 25 seconds to 12 seconds, increasing production efficiency by 108%. Simultaneously, the robotic arm can operate 24 hours a day without rest, extending the effective operating time of the production line from 16 hours/day to 22 hours/day. By the sixth month after the solution was implemented, the factory's overall capacity had increased from 80,000 pieces per month to 165,000 pieces, successfully doubling the target and fully meeting the surge in order demand.

Significantly Reduced Labor Costs: Through automation upgrades, the number of workers on each production line in the factory was reduced from 3-4 to 1 (responsible only for equipment monitoring and troubleshooting), and the overall workforce was reduced from 45 to 12, resulting in a 73% reduction in labor costs. Based on the average monthly wage of 3,500 RMB in Indonesia, the factory saves approximately 1.134 million RMB in labor costs annually, recovering the investment in automation equipment in just 14 months.

Steady Improvement in Product Quality: The high-precision operation of Zhiyi servo robotic arms effectively avoids problems such as product scratches, deformation, and material shortages caused by manual operation. The product qualification rate increased from 92% to 99.5%, and the rework rate decreased by over 90%. This not only reduced raw material waste (saving approximately 280,000 RMB in plastic raw material costs annually) but also improved customer satisfaction, leading to long-term order renewals from partner home appliance brands.

More efficient and controllable production management: The Zhiyi servo robotic arm is equipped with an intelligent monitoring system that can collect real-time data on equipment operation, production progress, and product qualification rates. Factory managers can remotely view the production status via mobile phone or computer, achieving transparent management of the production process. Simultaneously, the equipment fault early warning function can predict potential problems in advance, reducing equipment downtime from an average of 8 hours/month to 1.5 hours/month, significantly improving production stability.

V. Customer Feedback: "Zhiyi Makes Us More Competitive in the Southeast Asian Market"

"Choosing Zhiyi was one of the best decisions we made during our factory transformation," said the head of the Indonesian factory in an interview. "Before introducing Zhiyi servo robotic arms, we were plagued by insufficient production capacity and labor shortages, even facing the risk of losing core customers. Now, not only has our production capacity doubled, but product quality is also more stable, and labor costs have dropped significantly, greatly enhancing our competitiveness in the Southeast Asian home appliance component market."

The head specifically mentioned, "Zhiyi's customized solutions perfectly match our actual needs, requiring no large-scale modifications to existing production lines, greatly lowering the upgrade threshold. Moreover, their after-sales service response is very timely; even in Indonesia, they can quickly resolve the technical problems we encounter, giving us complete peace of mind. In the future, we plan to extend automation upgrades to more production lines and continue to deepen our cooperation with Zhiyi."

VI. Conclusion: Zhiyi Facilitates the Intelligent Transformation of Global Manufacturing

In the wave of global manufacturing transformation towards intelligence and automation, Zhiyi has always been committed to "providing high-quality automation equipment and solutions to promote the intelligent upgrading of manufacturing." With its outstanding technical strength, customized product solutions, and global service support, Zhiyi has served the global manufacturing industry... Over 500 projects have provided reliable automation solutions.

This case study, where the Indonesian factory doubled its production capacity by introducing Zhiyi servo robots, not only demonstrates the stable performance and outstanding effectiveness of Zhiyi products across regions and complex working conditions, but also provides a valuable practical example for automation upgrades in manufacturing enterprises throughout Southeast Asia and even globally.

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