How quickly can you launch Lean Robotics? A day? Six months? Here's how to make it quicker.
If you've heard about Lean Robotics, you may be wondering how long it takes to implement (if you haven't heard of Lean Robotics yet, check out leanrobotics.org).
You want to know how much time and effort it's going to take to get robots off the ground, right?
Will it take two months? Six months? A year? Ten years?
It's a great question and it may be hard to get a straight answer from anyone who has implemented robots before. Even if you do get some straight answers, they may be wildly different between businesses.
Take the example of Lean Manufacturing (which Lean Robotics is partly based on). Some people will say it takes one or two years to implement Lean, others say you can see results in six months. The Agamus Consult Automotive Lean Production study, says that it takes a whole ten years to fully integrate Lean into a business. Does Lean Robotics take that long? The short answer is no, it doesn't take a long time to launch Lean Robotics
In our RUC conference, attendees were able to deploy it in just 24 hours. In most real-world situations, you can see the results of Lean Robotics in a matter of months. But, only if you are smart about how you do it and make sure that you don't waste time.
There are two ways you can look at Lean Robotics: in terms of short term deployment and in terms of long term culture change.
When you ask me "How long does it take to launch Lean Robotics?" you are probably thinking about the short term cell deployment. You want to know how long it will be until you have a working robot in your business.
For a very simple robot cell, this could theoretically be as little as a week or so. However, you would have to be very lucky and your robot would already have to be in the post. More commonly, it will take a few months to go from nothing to a working robot cell.
However, this time frame is largely within your control. If you waste time, the robot cell deployment can take much longer. That's why the most important part of this article is still to come — I'm going to show how can you reduce the time you waste during your robot cell deployment.
As with Lean Manufacturing, Lean Robotics is really centered around a culture change in your business. This type of change takes time.
If you were to ask me "When will I be finished implementing Lean Robotics?" I would say "never". The concept of Lean is a continual process of improvement. When you have finished one robot deployment, you are already looking for ways that you can improve your cell or add other robots elsewhere in the manufacturing line.
Are you seriously considering implementing Lean Robotics?
If your answer is "yes" then start by doing the following: Note down the date and time now.
This date you've just written down is your start time for Lean Robotics. When your robot cell is working and you are starting to see results only then can you "stop the timer."
From now on, your goal should be to waste as little time as possible until your robot is operating.
But what do I mean by waste?
We often think of "waste" as being the resources lost when the manufacturing line is running. However, waste happens at every stage of robot cell deployment.
Lean Robotics splits robot cell deployment into three phases: Design, Integrate and Operate. It is a mistake to only consider waste during the Operate phase, but this is what most people do. Waste starts affecting your deployment as soon as you start planning for robots — i.e. right now!
If you want to shorten the time it takes you to implement Lean Robotics, focus on reducing the following wastes.
There are three major categories of waste in Lean Robotics. Here is how they affect the Design and Integrate phases:
Here are some examples of muda wastes during the Design and/or Integrate phases:
If you minimize these wastes, you can be sure that Lean Robotics will be up and running in no time!
Lean Robotics is a specific application of Lean concepts to make sure your robot cell deployment is a success.
You can learn more about Lean Robotics by going to leanrobotics.org and get your own copy of the book for free!