It is too early to say if the US has moved passed the worst of the pandemic. After all, as medical professionals warn, another surge is a possibility. However, despite uncertainty, a growing number of manufacturers have restarted albeit under a new normal. Of course, to remain stable, it is clear businesses need to reach new levels of agility and flexibility.

After all, there are still factories in highly impacted regions who have yet to restart, and most operating factories continue to function with less staff to comply with social distancing requirements. As such, manufacturers need to quickly adjust operations to accelerate production, while keeping employees safe. Strong partnerships between manufacturers and suppliers will also be critical to plan accordingly around availability of materials and people, explains Keith Higgins, vice president of digital transformation for Rockwell Automation.

“Offshore manufacturing in China and other highly-impacted regions will need to return to the US, including production of antibiotics and high-tech equipment,” says Higgins. “Automation and remote technology (such as augmented reality training) will become critical technologies for manufacturers to implement to ensure social distancing guidelines are being met, but staff are receiving the highest quality training and connecting on-site employees with off-site experts.”

Higgins tells IndustryWeek, automation can help streamline factory operations, allowing workers to shift their focus to higher skilled tasks, while eliminating a crowded factory floor to comply with new social distancing requirements. “By implementing automation, manufacturers can streamline tasks and obtain valuable insights from equipment – including increased demand and the need for equipment maintenance,” he says. “This will help manufacturers identify trends and alter capabilities accordingly. If a manufacturer’s operations are flexible, implementing automation makes factories easier to operate. Human to machine interfaces will help employees adjust operations as needed as they receive instant insight from machines, allowing factories to operate at their highest capabilities.”

Strategic investments

Understandably, making investments during uncertainty can be a difficult endeavor.  However, as Higgins points out there are various technologies that could prove instrumental for manufacturers going forward:

Augmented reality (AR). AR shows promise as manufactures train workers remotely through video, adapt to new travel restrictions and make pivots in production to address market demands for protective equipment and healthcare tools. AR can also serve as a meaningful tool to reskill employees for new operations and other critical areas such as safety, maintenance and quality assurance.

IoT. Investments in IoT technologies can replace manual equipment monitoring and operational assessments, helping manufacturers adapt to capacity and social distancing requirements. Implementing a smart factory can upgrade programs and systems to maximize production and adjust manufacturing capabilities as needed.

Analytics. Adopting a real-time analytics platform can provide instant insights without the need for manual monitoring, allowing workers to refocus their efforts on higher-level tasks while decreasing the amount of employees needed on the factory floor to check on machines.

Digital thread.  The digital rhread connects business processes across an organization – from product and process design to operations – all with real-time insights to enable agile decision-making, accelerated innovation, and increased quality and efficiency. Digital thread technology serves as a record of the evolution of an organization’s entire operations – physical machines, manufacturing processes, automation code, and maintenance steps – providing visibility into their past, present, and future state. This visibility is foundational to enabling digital transformation and fending off disruption with accelerated innovation, maximized workforce productivity and optimized operations.

Watch the road

The top misstep organizations can make is lagging behind their competition in their digital transformation efforts, explains Higgins. “Manufacturers need to avoid getting stuck in analysis paralysis, inhibiting their organization’s digital transformation efforts. It’s never too early to start digital transformation, but organizations should start small and progress quickly to remain competitive and successful,” he says. “Companies that are the furthest along in digital transformation will perform the best as we come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. These companies will return to the highest business level and have greater competitive separation post-virus due to their more agile manufacturing environments.”

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The user And the tasks that can be performed by the robots work.

As manufacturers of all sizes look to ramp up production again in the post-pandemic world, collaborative robots are definitely part of the equation. The ability to scale operations up – and down – quickly will be essential as demand uncertainty and the possibility of a return to high infection levels characterize the coming months.

But where to start?

In this post, we look at the A to Z of specific tasks for which cobots are ideally suited and examine how and why it makes sense to automate.

CNC Machine Telling

The high capital cost of CNC machines makes it imperative that the machines are kept loaded and running as much as possible. Cobots can perform all or parts of the typical CNC tool process tending steps: placing material in the machine, closing the door, activating the machine, opening the door when the machining is complete and removing the finished machined part.

Luling, the dispensing and welding

Cobots are well-suited for this type of work which requires accurate and repeatable motion of tools such as a welding tip or adhesive applicator tip, at every point on the path along the work pieces.

Injection moldinga machine Tending

As with CNC machines, molding tooling is expensive. Typical tasks involve removing the entire molded piece from the mold after plastic injection and cooling, trimming flashing or cutting production parts.

Laboratory analysis and testing

When it comes to testing of all kinds, careful adherence to regulatory and/or internal lab policies is paramount to ensuring repeatable, trusted and calibrated results. When commercial and private labs deploy cobots to perform routine tasks such as the application of chemical reagents, mixing, placement into incubators or freezers, moving treated or untreated samples in part or in whole, they:

Packaging and palletizing

These tasks both involve repetition, lifting heavy loads, and thought about where and how to optimally place packages of different sizes and weights. Studies have shown workers’ error rates rise and attention span falls after a couple of hours of straight repetitive work, making cobots the ideal partner for this type of work.

Pick and Place

At its simplest, pick and place tasks are those which require an object to be picked up from one location and placed in another specific location. Repetitive mundane tasks can create worker boredom and inattention, leading to errors and lower throughput.  

Polishing

Most polishing steps require use of a buffing tool with a rotating pad and chemical agent, moved around to remove surface defects, impart a smooth surface for further processing or as a final cosmetic step. The repetitive nature of this task, coupled with the need for consistency and repeatability make it ideal for cobot automation; typical results include:

Quality assurance

Products typically undergo cosmetic optical inspection, or a metrology inspection step (dimensional and/or electrical and/or operational), or both. Regardless of the complexity required, cobots can:

Screw and nut driving

Frequently these steps involve multiple positions, directions and heights, and torques delivered to the screws or nuts. It may be difficult to achieve consistent, high quality results with these repetitive tasks and employees may face ergonomic challenges when they handle bulky and heavy tools to repetitively drive screws and nuts during the production process.

Kobota to deliver

Kabaty have the potential to:

Application-centric cobots are here today and ready to go to work. Advances in hardware and software combine to accelerate the path to automation, improve productivity and efficiency, lower costs and ensure the flexible workforce needed to get back to “normal” – whatever that will look like.

Jim Lawton is vice president of product management at Universal Robots. 

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