Working as a student trainee at SSB Wägetechnik is a valuable opportunity to gain practical experience during your studies, to orientate yourself professionally and to make contacts for the future. This offers the ideal balance between studies and professional practice and is a win-win situation for both sides. We support young people in their professional careers in order to develop innovations and new products. At the same time, we secure the talent and commitment of the next generation, which contributes to our own long-term success and growth.

Our working student Ramona Gevenich successfully completed her final thesis in our “Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing (B.Eng.)” degree programme. Her topic and the project she worked on at our company: “Bag depalletising using robots”. (Title BA: “Automation of the depalletising of bagged goods in the chemical and plastics industry”).

She was already familiar with project work from her time at BMW Manufacturing USA. At SSB, she was able to get to know a medium-sized family business in which all areas work hand in hand and solution-orientation takes centre stage. The short decision-making processes, combined with the hands-on mentality of all employees, as well as their implementation strength, practical orientation, initiative and commitment, lead to rapid results in which all areas contribute their expertise and thus achieve an optimum result more quickly. The high quality standards that every employee at SSB Wägetechnik sets for themselves and the pleasure they take in their work are therefore reflected in all projects.

About the project:

The project involved the depalletising of bagged goods, which was to be implemented using the Okura Ai1800 robot. The 25 kg plastic granulate sacks pose an enormous challenge if they are to be moved automatically and without damage. It was therefore necessary to find experts in sensor technology and pneumatics to combine the components with the expertise of SSB, the aim was to develop a stable, reliable process, particularly in terms of control technology and programming.

To this end, a suitable sensor system was identified to detect the layer pattern and the height of the palletised bagged goods. Two pneumatic grippers were then developed to reliably pick up the goods. These were assembled and tested, but it quickly became apparent that only one of the grippers was really suitable for holding the goods at the enormous acceleration of the robot. The process, programming and connection between the gripper and robot were then fine-tuned and optimised until a reliable, stable process could be created. All possible error patterns in the practical implementation in customer systems also had to be considered. Finally, a calculation was carried out so that the new depalletising hand could be included in the SSB range.

Questions for Ramona Gevenich, working student at SSB

What exactly did you do at SSB?

My work focussed on coordinating an interdisciplinary project. Internal and external departments had to be coordinated in order to optimise the use of resources. This meant finding external suppliers, comparing offers and finding the optimum components, while at the same time incorporating internal expertise and experience and never losing sight of the requirements for the system to be developed.

What have you learnt from this?

For me, the tried and tested saying has been confirmed – “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. No matter how big a project may seem at the beginning and how unattainable a goal may seem, with the right connections (almost) anything can be achieved. It is important to build a bridge between innovation and experience and to find a common goal as motivation.

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