{"id":578832,"date":"2024-04-24T09:37:31","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T13:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therobotreport.com\/?p=578832"},"modified":"2024-04-24T09:59:32","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T13:59:32","slug":"why-cobots-hold-key-unlocking-operational-efficiency-large-manufacturers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therobotreport.com\/why-cobots-hold-key-unlocking-operational-efficiency-large-manufacturers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why cobots hold the key to unlocking operational efficiency in large manufacturers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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UR cobots at the Peugeot assembly plant in France. | Source: Teradyne<\/p><\/div>\n

My LinkedIn inbox has been busier than usual over the last couple of weeks, since I shared an opinion piece in Forbes<\/em><\/a> titled “The Reinvention of the Manufacturing Industry,” exploring how a new generation of advanced robotics is helping to democratize manufacturing, making robots affordable for companies of all sizes.<\/p>\n

Several of my professional contacts have reached out to ask: Are collaborative robots<\/a> really just for small and medium-sized companies then? We know this is not true, and so I need to offer some further explanation.<\/p>\n

Since the inception of mechanization and mass-production processes at the start of the last century, the tools large manufacturers have used to drive competitiveness and efficiency have been geared towards using size as an advantage — economies of scale, large industrial robots for high-volume low-mix tasks, large budgets to fund efficiency programs like lean and six sigma, and the ability to outsource labor at scale to anywhere with ease.<\/p>\n

However, these levers designed for big companies didn\u2019t work for smaller businesses. That\u2019s why “new age” robotics, led by collaborative robots and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs<\/a>), has been a game changer for many small to midsize enterprises. But it\u2019s not where the cobot story ends. Or ironically, even began.<\/p>\n

For the large manufacturers<\/a>, competitive pressure drove need for differentiation, which increased product variations. You can feel that on every one of their assembly lines today.<\/p>\n

But several large manufacturers are still stuck with the old tools designed for low-mix, high-volume manufacturing in this new reality, where each of their factories and warehouses have increasingly high-mix and smaller batch sizes. Manufacturers are increasingly using advanced technologies like cobots and AMRs to make their operations nimbler and more flexible while speeding up time to market.<\/p>\n

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The origin of the cobot<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Few people today realize that collaborative robots were first designed with large companies in mind.<\/p>\n

The founders of Universal Robots<\/a> (UR) examined businesses already using industrial robots and set themselves the challenge of creating something that was more easily reprogrammable for different functions across factory floors. With the competition that manufacturers face today, the need for product variations for differentiation matters greatly That feeling is palpable when I walk their assembly line.<\/p>\n

The solution that UR<\/a> came up with? The world\u2019s first commercially viable cobot \u2013 a child of two separate university research projects.<\/p>\n

The first project sought to create a toy robot so easy to program that a child could do it in half an hour.<\/p>\n

The second project focused on the needs of the food industry in Denmark, which at the time was looking for a more flexible approach to automation that would allow factory employees to reconfigure production lines to accommodate new products. Engineers that tried to build that flexibility into traditional industrial robots<\/a> got nowhere \u2013 it was simply impossible for workers on the factory floor to learn how to reprogram the technology that existed.<\/p>\n

The above projects came together, and the rest, as they say, is history. The result was an easily programable, highly versatile robot.<\/p>\n

The use of cobots in large organizations today<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The global market for collaborative robots was expected to hit $1.6 billion at the end of 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 26% to 2026, as predicted<\/a> by Research and Markets. It attributed this increase to a rise in smart factories and growing demand in the Asia-Pacific region.<\/p>\n

While it’s true that cobots are democratizing robotics, they have always been of great use to large companies. But I believe that large manufacturers are yet to fully embrace the capabilities they offer.<\/p>\n

Solid economic drivers for increased uptake are present, including labor and skills shortages, as recent research<\/a> suggests large companies have the tallest hill to climb when it comes to employee retention.<\/p>\n

It’s no wonder that many large companies \u2013 including major global corporations like Siemens, Toyota, and Novo Nordisk \u2013 have fully integrated cobot technology to make their operations more nimble.<\/p>\n

The time has now come for the industry to do this across the board. In a competitive world, large companies have no choice but to increase agility at every turn. Slow down, and they risk falling foul to more nimble competition.<\/p>\n

New-age robotics offers greater efficiency and speed to market, and enterprises need to board this train today or risk getting left behind on the platform.<\/p>\n