The Forge of Innovation: Pfanzelt Boosts Competitiveness with Advanced Automation from MicroStep

The foothills of the Allgäu Alps in southern Germany are known for their beautiful landscapes, delicious cheese, and thick forests. The last feature is what made this region, called Allgäu, the perfect place for Paul Pfanzelt to found a forestry machinery company in 1991 that bears his own name. Starting as a producer and installer of geared cable winches, the company’s production portfolio expanded in 1996 to professional forwarding trailers and went on expanding: forestry tractors, loading cranes, versatile implement carriers, the ever-growing list goes on.

Today, Pfanzelt Maschinenbau GmbH is known internationally for its innovative forestry machinery and municipal maintenance technology. "Our product range is incredibly broad, which means we also have a very diverse target audience," explains Marketing Director Peter Voderholzer. "We are the only full-range supplier of forestry machinery in Europe, and we've long since moved beyond forestry as our sole target sphere," he adds. Municipal landscaping, winter road service, maintenance of ski resorts and bike parks, the vast scope of customer’s requirements are met by products that can be uniquely tailored to individual tasks and conditions. Many of its innovations have been driven by its clients’ requests and suggestions, an approach some of its employees call “the forge for new ideas”.

In 2023, Pfanzelt Maschinenbau GmbH put into operation a new production hall covering around 3,000 square meters with an almost fully automated cutting area, comprising two cutting machines and an automatic material loading/unloading unit from MicroStep.

Self-sufficient and Competitive

This path comes with its own challenges. One example is cutting of parts. Depending on the project, needs of Pfanzelt vary from very small parts to parts 4.5 meters long and up to 0.5 tons in weight, often single pieces or small batch sizes. "Sometimes we only need one or two parts to test something. That doesn't work with a supplier. So, we were forced to do it ourselves," explains Production Manager Roland Sterk. The result is that Pfanzelt outsources little of its production. The vast majority of all work is handled by its approximately 180 employees in Rettenberg, Germany, from the initial idea to the final screw.

The plasma cutting machine MG is equipped with a plasma rotator for 3D bevel cutting for weld seam preparation up to 50°. The machine also has an automatic pipe cutting device and a tool station for drilling, tapping and countersinking.

To make this all work while remaining competitive, the company invested in 2023 in a highly automated new production hall. The 100 x 30-meter space, partially two-storied, houses goods receipt and dispatch, pre-assembly, storage, and part of the technology park. "The starting point was lack of storage capacity. What emerged is a comprehensive logistics concept that can process sheet metal and much more," says Roland Sterk.

The starting and endpoint of the new hall is a storage system from the company STOPA: 18 meters high with 2,679 storage positions and a loading capacity of more than 8,000 tons. This system supplies material to press brakes, including a robotic bending cell, and a new automated cutting area. "The investment in the cutting area came about as part of the hall’s construction. We were always interested in being able to cut bevels. MicroStep has extensive experience and excellent references in this area. Previously, we prepared weld edges on a machining center and moved tons of material through the halls for this purpose. We have high-stress components where welds are critical," explains Roland Sterk.

The 2D laser cutting system MSF Pro is primarily used to process thin sheets. The high-speed solution has a high degree of automation, including a shuttle table, a nozzle cleaning and calibration station, and automatic nozzle exchange.

An Idea Was Forged

What started as a search for a single machine with a beveling unit, ended after extensive consultations as a fully automated cutting facility from MicroStep, comprising a 2D laser cutting machine MSF Pro, a 3D plasma cutting machine MG and MSLoad, a material handling system that serves them both.

The MSLoad is linked to the STOPA storage system. When a cutting order is generated from the company order database, the storage system takes the specified metal plate from one of its shelves and loads it onto the destination machine via MicroStep’s MSLoad: either on the MSF Pro 3001.15L 3 x 1.5 m fiber laser for straight cutting of plates 2 to 8 mm thick, or the MG 4001.20PrkB+CL800P+ST2 for plasma bevel cutting of plates up to 4 x 2 m and a thickness between 10 and 30 mm. The MG can also process pipes up to Ø 800 mm and features additional technologies for drilling, tapping, and countersinking. Once the cutting is done, the loader comes back to take the cut parts back into the storage. Later, at the parts' assembly stage, the cut parts are automatically retrieved from the storage based on information from MicroStep's advanced production management system CyberFab Manager, and transported to subsequent workplaces in the hall.

The entry as well as finishing point of the new facility is an automated STOPA storage system with a height of 18 meters and 2,679 storage positions. The shelving system is linked to the MSLoad material handling unit from MicroStep, which loads raw material onto the two cutting machines and automatically stores the cut part after cutting is finished.

Just like with Pfanzelt's customized solutions, this was no off-the-shelf product. The machines had to be tailored to the company’s specific production requirements, the interface to the STOPA system created and implemented, everything synchronized with Pfanzelt’s ERP system – a process where MicroStep's extensive experience with custom machines and digitalization proved invaluable. "We wanted a single point of contact, including for the interfaces. We didn’t want a separate automation provider, a plasma provider, and a laser provider," emphasizes Sterk.

Automation for Increased Efficiency

Following intensive planning, project development, and commissioning, the cutting facility has been in continuous operation since mid-spring 2024. Machine operator Daniel Klaus oversees the cutting area and lets the machines do their work. While Pfanzelt predominantly operates a single-shift production, its automated area also runs on weekends.

"The main goal of the solution was to minimize manual handling of the plates, maintain an inventory of sheet metal, and enable storage back into the shelving system. We can now plan precisely when to cut what; clarity has significantly improved. And we can cut with fewer personnel," concludes Roland Sterk.

The tailor-made automation project helps Project Manager Roland Sterk, the production manager, and Daniel Klaus, the machine operator at Pfanzelt Maschinenbau GmbH, to have a better overview and greater planning capability, while lowering the company’s personnel costs.