The Challenge
A UK automotive manufacturer was running a body in white production line that, while operational, was not performing at the throughput level the business needed. The line was controlled by a Rockwell PLC and used KUKA robots across multiple stations. The cycle time was longer than it should have been, and the business wanted to understand what was causing it and whether it could be improved without major capital investment or extended downtime.
The challenge with cycle time optimisation on a live production line is that you cannot simply stop the line and experiment. Every change has to be understood, planned, and proven before it touches production. The work had to be done around the line's shift pattern, implemented during breaks and after shifts, and every change had to be safe and reversible.
The brief: Identify and implement cycle time improvements on a live automotive body in white line, working around the production schedule with zero unplanned downtime. Target: measurable reduction in cycle time within one week on site.
How Duke Approached It
Observe First, Change Nothing
The first step was observation. Duke's engineers spent time on the line watching each station carefully and recording video of the robots and the full cycle sequence. No changes were made at this stage. The objective was to build a complete picture of exactly how the line was running, where time was being lost, and what the interactions between stations looked like across a full cycle.
This methodical approach is easy to skip when there is pressure to show results quickly, but it is the foundation of effective optimisation. Changes made without proper observation often solve the wrong problem, or create new ones.
Offline Analysis
With video footage of the line captured, Duke's engineers reviewed the sequences offline, away from the production environment. This allowed a detailed, frame-by-frame analysis of each robot's motion, the timing of handshakes between stations, and the points in the cycle where time was being lost unnecessarily. Multiple improvement opportunities were identified, each individually small but collectively significant.
By doing this analysis offline, the team could plan each change carefully, understand its implications for the rest of the cycle, and define exactly what needed to be modified and when, before anything was touched on the live system.
Safe Implementation During Shift Breaks
Changes were implemented during shift breaks and after production shifts, ensuring the line's output was never interrupted. Each modification was planned in advance, carried out methodically, and verified before production resumed. The KUKA robot programs were adjusted to refine motion paths, reduce unnecessary wait times, and tighten the sequencing between stations. Where changes interacted with the Rockwell PLC logic, these were handled carefully to maintain safe, correct operation throughout.
This phased approach, making changes incrementally and verifying each one before moving to the next, meant that the impact of every modification was understood clearly and that no single change introduced risk to the production programme.
The temptation on a project like this is to jump straight to making changes. The discipline is in watching first, understanding what is actually happening rather than what you think is happening, and then making changes you are confident about. That is where the results come from.
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Across seven days on site, Duke's engineers identified and implemented multiple targeted improvements to the KUKA robot programs and station sequencing. The cumulative effect of these changes was a cycle time reduction of 34.33%, saving 103 seconds on every single cycle the line runs.
For a production line running continuously across multiple shifts, 103 seconds saved per cycle translates directly into a significant increase in units produced per shift, per day, and per year, without any additional capital investment, without extending the line, and without any unplanned production downtime.
The result was achieved entirely through engineering expertise, careful observation, and methodical implementation, rather than new hardware or extended shutdown periods.
At a Glance
- Sector: Automotive, Body in White, UK
- Scope: Cycle time analysis, robot program optimisation, PLC coordination
- Robot Platform: KUKA
- PLC Platform: Rockwell
- Time on Site: 7 days
- Cycle Time Saved: 103 seconds per cycle
- Cycle Time Reduction: 34.33%
- Production Downtime: Zero
- Status: Complete