Small and medium enterprises are introducing more collaborative robots to their shop floor to help them gain productivity. This new generation of robot is especially designed to work alongside people, rather than replacing them. Applications such as machine tending, packaging and assembly can now be done by these robots and free up the employee for more essential tasks.
Since their realese, collaborative robots are getting more performant. Regular software and hardware updates are done to allow customers to have high performing, fluid, fast and safe robots for a very low cost. Robots at a $25,000 - $40,000 price point are now a current thing on the market. A big advantage of these kinds of robots is that once you have a robot arm and a robot gripper, there is basically nothing else to buy. It is a real plug and play solution. The elimination of fencing and the virtual elimination of integration problems makes it cheap and easy to install. But the real advantage of these robots is that they are capable of executing a high mix of tasks (highly flexible). With their easy programming, it is quite simple to teach them a task and let them do it again and again. Compared to classical industrial robots that are generally rather complicated to program and often take an extensive background in robot integration. The co-bots are way easier to use for someone with little or nonexistent knowledge in robotics.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, Panek Precision, an Illinois based machine shop, doubled its production using such robots. The robots are used for machine tending purposes and can now run around the clock. This increased spindle time and at the end of the day, the efficiency of the machine shop too. The employees were then redirected to more stimulating and important tasks. A lot of companies out there are using this type of automation to enhance productivity by liberating their employees from redundant tasks rather than reducing costs by reducing the number of employees. Panek Precision has 21 single-arm robots in its factory, most of which are doing machine tending.
"Having the robots has allowed us to move our existing workers into more useful tasks," - Gregg Panek, owner of Panek Precisio
We have recently had feedback from customers who have gone from a 40% spindle time to a 95% spindle time on a CNC machine simply by integrating a robot into their cell. That is an incredible enhancement considering the investment. And it wouldn't have the same effect if you tripled your staff, it is basically not a case of how many people work on a machine, but rather how the job is done and how it can be optimized. At the end of the day, it means a huge productivity enhancement and all of this using the same number of employees. As the employees get repositioned to do tool setups, machine maintenance, robot programming and continual cell enhancement.
"As a small business grows, it is critical that they invest whenever possible into automation," Cameron Baird, the chief executive of the shipping services company CargoBarn said when asked about Amazon's use of robots. "The most efficient companies leverage technology to streamline processes, promote cost savings, and cut down on errors." All the experts are willing to say that automation is one of the most cost efficient ways to increase production as an SME. With global spending on robotics going from $5 billion in 2010 to an estimate of about $67 billion in 2015, it is time to get into the swing of things and automate.
If you want to learn more about the different applications that collaborative robots can execute, consult our eBook on collaborative robots. To get constant updates on robotic news or our products, subscribe to our blog or our LinkedIn page.
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