MARCH 2019 AUTOMATION
challenges thrown their way, whilst not putting too
much of a strain on the budgets of SMEs.
The benefits of cobots
Being smaller and more agile than traditional
industrial robots, cobots can be deployed directly
on the factory floor to work side-by-side with
human employees. Their advanced safety functions
make them completely safe to deploy without
any additional safety rails, further adding to their
flexibility feature. Cobots have a number of safety
functions designed to decrease the risk of harm,
such as their highly sensitive sensors which will
instantly halt all of its operations should anything
come into contact with it. These safety functions
act as reassurances to current employees of their
safety to collaborate with on the floor.
Most SME manufacturers work on highly
specialised and customised batches of products,
which may change from day to day, which is why
the ability to be flexible and highly responsive to
customer demands is a number one priority for
them. Implementing cobots into the workforce
has proven fruitful for many SMEs today who
were looking to run multiple short product lines
within one shift. By taking over the most repetitive,
mundane and dangerous tasks, the cobots have not
only managed to boost productivity at factories
but also free up human workers to focus on more
creative and rewarding tasks which the cobots
cannot do.
Seeing that cobots enable
manufacturers to provide
their clients a higher degree of
product diversity and exclusivity,
several SMEs have already
opted to invest in cobots as a
way of increasing productivity.
FT-Produktion, a Swedish
supplier of machinery to a wide
range of customers including
carmakers and the furniture
industry, significantly increased
production and efficiency at
its factory by implementing
cobots into their production
line. The cobots also enabled
factory operations to
be more responsive to
customer demands.
Given the wide range
of tasks and volumes,
flexible automation
was absolutely
essential for
FT-Produktion
– the company
now saves over
500 hours when
manufacturing
a series of
150,000 parts.
An essential feature for the
cobots is thus the capability of
handling many different tasks
and products with minimal
downtime when reconfiguring
from one production run
to the next. This capability
has further been put to use
closer to home by B-Loony, an
SME manufacturer of highly
customised promotional
products. Having started out
with one cobot, the company
quickly decided to invest in five
more, having seen the effect
they have on productivity.
B-Loony deployed the cobots
to do a range of tasks that
human operators previously
handled manually – today
these employees supervise up
to four cobots at a time whilst
they carry out tasks such as
blowing up balloons, sewing
bunting together and assembling
food-flags. Read more about
B-Loony’s use of cobots in MM’s
January 2019 issue (https://bit.
ly/2GnBpD8).
Cobots have already proven
their worth in taking over
the most mundane tasks and
thereby increasing productivity
at factories and responsiveness
to customer demands. In the
current political environment,
collaborative robotics is further
in a unique position to reduce
the concerns of many UK-based
manufacturing companies by
eliminating the fear of future
skills gaps. The threat of the UK
crashing out of the EU means
more and more people will now
start looking at automation as
perhaps not just a viable but a
necessary option to the
rising skills gap. No
matter the outcome of Brexit,
collaborative robots are here
to stay and will potentially be
the saving force for companies
wishing to stay competitive in
the ever-changing market.
Cobots are
proving
increasingly
popular with
SMEs
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