The collaborative robots have entered and made their mark across various industries in recent years.
At first, it was only metal companies that would use cobots, but today you see that many other industries using collaborative applications.
The driver for the growth has been the big flexibility that allows the robot to be used for various applications. The endless possibilities mean that there is a cobot for every market and an application for every process – from gluing of small parts to picking and placing parts for machine tending.
Basically, all working processes that include boring and precise actions have potential for collaborative applications.
Most robots that are used in manufacturing operations; the applications can be divided into three categories: (1) material handling, (2) processing operations, and (3) assembly and inspection.
The fundamental keys to success if you want to deploy automation are:
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Identify the right application.
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Design the whole system
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Stick to the must-haves, avoiding nice-to-haves and feature creep. Get the cell in production ASAP and improve from there.
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Using standard plug-and-play components as building blocks to accelerate your project.
The advantages the system brings in all industries are:
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Improvement of product quality, by improvement in your production line’s consistency and reduce the number of defective products.
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Elimination of human ergonomic constraints on the production line, robots can increase the output.
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Time savings, and saving idle a human employee time
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Prevention of human health and safety issues.
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Standardize tasks and parts.
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Waste reduction practices by eliminating some non-value-added tasks (such as part preparation, cleaning, etc. by manual operators).
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Automatic error-proofing. The robot gripper recognizes when it’s presented with the wrong part
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The robot can go into a specific visible position or cause a light to flash, letting human operators know they need to take action.
The basic manufacturing process is transforming physical materials and selling physical products. But with time, the jobs in a factory will look more like IT jobs than welding jobs.
Machines now are all controlled by computers, not only by mechanical or electrical means like in the past, and they’re getting more and more connected.