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UR cobots on the Peugeot meeting plant in France. | Supply: Teradyne

My LinkedIn inbox has been busier than regular over the past couple of weeks, since I shared an opinion piece in Forbes titled “The Reinvention of the Manufacturing Trade,” exploring how a brand new technology of superior robotics helps to democratize manufacturing, making robots inexpensive for firms of all sizes.

A number of of my skilled contacts have reached out to ask: Are collaborative robots actually only for small and medium-sized firms then? We all know this isn’t true, and so I would like to supply some additional clarification.

For the reason that inception of mechanization and mass-production processes at the beginning of the final century, the instruments giant producers have used to drive competitiveness and effectivity have been geared in the direction of utilizing dimension as a bonus — economies of scale, giant industrial robots for high-volume low-mix duties, giant budgets to fund effectivity applications like lean and 6 sigma, and the power to outsource labor at scale to wherever with ease.

Nevertheless, these levers designed for giant firms didn’t work for smaller companies. That’s why “new age” robotics, led by collaborative robots and autonomous cell robots (AMRs), has been a recreation changer for a lot of small to midsize enterprises. Nevertheless it’s not the place the cobot story ends. Or sarcastically, even started.

For the massive producers, aggressive strain drove want for differentiation, which elevated product variations. You may really feel that on each one among their meeting strains at the moment.

However a number of giant producers are nonetheless caught with the previous instruments designed for low-mix, high-volume manufacturing on this new actuality, the place every of their factories and warehouses have more and more high-mix and smaller batch sizes. Producers are more and more utilizing superior applied sciences like cobots and AMRs to make their operations nimbler and extra versatile whereas dashing up time to market.

The origin of the cobot

Few individuals at the moment notice that collaborative robots had been first designed with giant firms in thoughts.

The founders of Common Robots (UR) examined companies already utilizing industrial robots and set themselves the problem of making one thing that was extra simply reprogrammable for various capabilities throughout manufacturing unit flooring. With the competitors that producers face at the moment, the necessity for product variations for differentiation issues drastically That feeling is palpable once I stroll their meeting line.

The answer that UR got here up with? The world’s first commercially viable cobot – a baby of two separate college analysis tasks.

The primary venture sought to create a toy robotic really easy to program {that a} baby may do it in half an hour.

The second venture targeted on the wants of the meals trade in Denmark, which on the time was in search of a extra versatile strategy to automation that will permit manufacturing unit workers to reconfigure manufacturing strains to accommodate new merchandise. Engineers that attempted to construct that flexibility into conventional industrial robots obtained nowhere – it was merely unimaginable for staff on the manufacturing unit flooring to learn to reprogram the expertise that existed.

The above tasks got here collectively, and the remainder, as they are saying, is historical past. The outcome was an simply programable, extremely versatile robotic.

Using cobots in giant organizations at the moment

The worldwide marketplace for collaborative robots was anticipated to hit $1.6 billion on the finish of 2023, with a compound annual development price of 26% to 2026, as predicted by Analysis and Markets. It attributed this enhance to an increase in good factories and rising demand within the Asia-Pacific area.

Whereas it’s true that cobots are democratizing robotics, they’ve at all times been of nice use to giant firms. However I imagine that enormous producers are but to completely embrace the capabilities they provide.

Stable financial drivers for elevated uptake are current, together with labor and expertise shortages, as latest analysis suggests giant firms have the tallest hill to climb on the subject of worker retention.

It’s no marvel that many giant firms – together with main international firms like Siemens, Toyota, and Novo Nordisk – have absolutely built-in cobot expertise to make their operations extra nimble.

The time has now come for the trade to do that throughout the board. In a aggressive world, giant firms haven’t any selection however to extend agility at each flip. Decelerate, they usually threat falling foul to extra nimble competitors.

New-age robotics affords better effectivity and pace to market, and enterprises have to board this practice at the moment or threat getting left behind on the platform.

The combination of cobots and industrial automation

Right here too, it’s actually thrilling to witness how collaborative robots are actually working with conventional industrial robots.

Retrofitting a manufacturing line with cobots tends to be pretty simple, partly due to the system’s small footprint. Deeper integration between cobots and conventional industrial robots can also be now usually attainable by the programmable logic controller (PLC).

However a lot extra could be executed. The potential alternatives awaiting giant gamers in 2024 are colossal, and I can’t wait to see extra embracing an all-encompassing automation course of in manufacturing, positioning cobots to extend productiveness, product high quality, and security.

Trying to the long run: AI-enabled cobots and extra subtle purposes

As machine studying and AI-enabled cobot purposes change into extra extensively obtainable, bigger companies are completely positioned to leverage this cutting-edge tech to assist their complicated and complicated enterprise wants. From high quality inspection utilizing laptop imaginative and prescient to dealing with high-mix purposes on the manufacturing flooring, I see firms utilizing cobots to enhance prices and improve buyer satisfaction.

Cobots have change into user-friendly sufficient for even the smallest companies, serving to to democratize manufacturing. However they’re additionally being paired with a number of the world’s most subtle applied sciences, supporting global-scale firms in changing into extra productive than ever.

In regards to the writer

Ujjwal Kumar is group president of Teradyne Robotics. Over his 25-plus-year profession, Kumar has efficiently scaled companies at main multinationals together with Normal Motors, Normal Electrical, and Honeywell.

Kumar shall be giving a keynote presentation on the Robotics Summit & Expo subsequent week. In it, he’ll share some classes he has realized and the way they are often utilized to speed up the transformation of trade with robotics. Registration is now open for the occasion, which shall be on Could 1 and a pair of on the Boston Conference and Exhibition Middle.

Study from Agility Robotics, Amazon, Disney, Teradyne and plenty of extra.