04 & 05 November 2025
Halls 1, 2, 4 & 6, IFEMA, Madrid
05 & 06 November 2025
Halls 8 & 10, IFEMA, Madrid
04 & 05 November 2025
Halls 1, 2, 4 & 6, IFEMA, Madrid
05 & 06 November 2025
Halls 8 & 10, IFEMA, Madrid
The Puente la Reina plant wins the Schneider Electric “Smart Factory” award for accelerating its Industry 4.0 transformation with Stratasys FDM technology.
The company reduces its dependence on suppliers, increases manufacturing flexibility, and accelerates time to market.
Over the past year, industrial giant Schneider Electric has embarked on a large-scale implementation of Industry 4.0 across its operations worldwide. Through this “Smart Factory” project, the company is implementing a strategy based on cutting-edge technologies and the benefits of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to optimize processes. The initiative, designed to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs for its customers, has been rolled out across the company’s factories worldwide. The goal is for each plant to embrace the challenge of opening doors to innovation and driving digital transformation.
One of the company’s champions has been its Puente la Reina plant in Navarra (Spain), which has strategically adopted Stratasys FDM additive manufacturing throughout its entire production process. The significant improvement in plant efficiency, particularly in machining operations, has earned its management team recognition at the highest level within Schneider Electric. In fact, the Puente la Reina plant recently won Schneider Electric’s internal European “Smart Factory” competition for accelerating the plant’s Industry 4.0 transformation, with a large volume of 3D-printed manufacturing tools, significant time and cost savings, and newly optimized supply chain efficiencies.
3D-printed assembly line tool designed to hold switches during the production process. Manufactured in ABS using the Stratasys F170 3D printer.
“Over the past year, Stratasys FDM additive manufacturing has saved us nearly €20,000 in the production of assembly line tools alone, more than offsetting our initial investment in the F170 3D printer,” says Manuel Otamendi, Head of Industrialization and Maintenance, Global Supply Chain, at Schneider Electric’s Puente la Reina plant. “With this technology, we can manufacture new high-performance production tools in just one day, whereas previously we needed at least a week to outsource their manufacturing. This significantly reduces our dependence on suppliers and gives us much greater control over tool production, which has increased the overall flexibility of our manufacturing process and accelerated the time-to-market for many products.”
Acquired through Stratasys’ local partner, Pixel Sistemas, Schneider Electric’s Stratasys F170 industrial-grade 3D printer is used in a variety of applications, including the manufacturing of tools, guides, fixtures, robotic grippers, and other end-of-arm tooling for the assembly line. Previously, the manufacturing of these parts was outsourced to third parties using expensive CNC machining or injection molding processes. The F170, which has become the main engine of the Puente la Reina factory, produces more than 100 new production tool designs per year.
An example of this is the manufacturing of grippers for robot arms on the assembly line. Thanks to its F170 3D printer, Schneider Electric has developed new applications for the grippers, allowing it to improve robot performance and ensure greater savings.
“It is not uncommon for aluminum mold parts to break if they collide, and when they do, replacing them is very expensive,”
explains Otamendi. “To solve this problem, we can now replace expensive aluminum grippers for robot arms with alternative 3D-printed parts. The 3D-printed tool not only offers the same mechanical performance as the traditional tool, but also ensures the protection of the more expensively manufactured aluminum parts when the molds collide. If the 3D-printed tool breaks, we can replace it with a low-cost 3D-printed part in a matter of hours.”
“To put the cost savings into perspective, outsourcing the manufacturing of a machined gripper used to cost us €200 per tool. Now we can 3D-print them on demand for around €100 each. The ability to also reduce the complexity of our supply chain is very important to us today, so having this on-demand production capability in-house is essential,” he adds.
The significant cost savings and production workflow simplification we’ve achieved by integrating Stratasys FDM additive manufacturing have had a positive impact on the plant’s overall manufacturing efficiency and reduced time-to-market in key areas.
“Additive manufacturing has transformed the way we work and completely changed our mindset regarding how we do things in the future,” says Otamendi. “While we will continue to use our F170 to further optimize the machining process, we are exploring the possibility of leveraging other high-performance FDM materials available for Stratasys F123 series 3D printers to manufacture end-use parts for the production line. Increased use of this technology will be critical to achieving our digital transformation goals.”
Yann Rageul, Director of Manufacturing Solutions for EMEA at Stratasys, explains: “As we look to recover from the pandemic, we are seeing clear signs that additive manufacturing can play a pivotal role in improving traditional supply chains and conventional production lines. As business leaders look to re-optimize their operations, we expect an increasing number of companies to strategically adopt the technology, such as Schneider Electric, which continues to successfully drive its digital transformation journeys. Additive manufacturing not only allows them to increase production flexibility and reduce their reliance on suppliers, but also provides them with the ability to improve operational efficiency during the product development process. While this is likely a common goal for most companies, the impact of COVID-19 has further amplified its importance.”
Press contacts:
Jonathan Wake/Miguel Afonso
Incus Media
stratasys@incus-media.com
+44 1737 215200
