Rising trends in the adoption of collaborative automation

by James McKew, Regional Director Asia-Pacific, Universal Robots

Advantages include competitive costs, rapid payback, and ease of deployment.

Mr James McKew

Hyundae Induction Hardening Heat Treatment (HIHHT), from South Korea, deployed two UR10 cobots in its induction hardening heattreatment process. The UR10 cobots helped free human labour from simple repetitive tasks, allowing flexible labour re-allocations.

Craft and Technik Industries (CATI) in India deployed UR cobots for automatic inspection and CNC machine tending tasks.

More factories than ever before now rely on robots to help relieve human workers from tedious and dangerous tasks, ensure product quality with repetitive tasks, and improve overall productivity. In 2020, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) estimated that 2.7 million industrial robots are currently deployed around the globe. The IFR also reported that collaborative robots (cobots) have overtaken traditional robots in terms of growth, growing up to four times faster in 2019.

In the past decade, the manufacturing sector has seen a considerable shift away from mass production towards high-mix/low-volume (HMLV) production batches. Universal Robots (UR) supports this trend towards customised manufacturing by providing manufacturers with versatile collaborative robots that are easy to program, making it easy to accommodate short production runs. Cobots are versatile and flexible, making them ideally suited to HMLV manufacturing environments. UR cobots can be deployed on a wide variety of applications, including assembly, dispensing, finishing, machine tending, material handling, material removal, quality inspection, and welding. The UR+ ecosystem builds on this flexibility by providing a range of software and hardware components, from end-of-arm tooling to vision systems and inspection and palletising kits, designed to provide manufacturers with all tools needed to quickly set up a specialised automation project. Additionally, following a risk assessment, cobots can be deployed safely next to human workers without the need for safety cages or fences, which further facilitates quick and easy deployments. Hyundae Induction Hardening Heat Treatment (HIHHT) from South Korea deployed two UR10 cobots in its HMLV manufacturing facility. As a result, the production failure rate decreased from 0.03% to 0.01% and overall production efficiency increased by 31%. By automating repetitive processes, the company was able to hire two additional employees.

Driven by difficulties finding manual labour, automotive component manufacturer Craft and Technik Industries (CATI) in India deployed UR cobots for automatic inspection and CNC machine tending tasks. As a result, efficiency at the SME has increased, with production volume going up between 15% and 20%, with zero defects or customer rejections. “We talk about unemployment all over the country but the truth with the SME sector is that we actually cannot find enough qualified labour. Hence, the best combination for us is incorporating robots in our manufacturing, alongside human workers. Smartly combining the number of machines and robots ensures that the payback period will be faster. The time has come for SMEs to automate - robots are no longer the prerogative of large-scale industries only”, said Mr Prashant Shantaram Umbrani, CEO of CATI.

Traditional robots are expensive to purchase and maintain, require extensive safety features including cages and fencing, and require experts for programming, maintenance, and repair. Each of these factors acts as a barrier to automation adoption, particularly for SMEs. Whereas, UR cobots lower these barriers, making it easier than ever to justify the cost of investing in industrial automation. Cobots cost a fraction of the price of traditional robots and typically provide a return on investment (ROI) in as short as 12 months. Universal Robots has further lowered the financial burden through UR Financial Services, enabling manufacturers to instantly reap the benefits of cobot automation without worrying about cash flow and seasonal fluctuations. This means that companies of any size and budget can get started with cobots quickly and without having to make capital investments in equipment. Cobots are designed with ease-of-use in mind. This means that the vast majority of operators, having completed a simple online training course, are able to program UR cobots quickly and easily. Cobots eliminate the costs associated with having to get robot experts to re-program the cobots, while providing the opportunity to upskill existing workers for high-value cobot monitoring and programming tasks. In factories where space is at a premium, cobots offer a way to implement automation without having to redesign production lines. This is because cobots have a small footprint and can be moved easily to a different part of the factory shop floor as production schedules change, for example, by mounting them on a mobile platform or lifting them using a dolly. Cobots are easy to add to a production line since they can be deployed close to human workers without the need for space-sapping safety cages and fencing (upon risk assessment). The last two decades have been marked by significant advancements in robotic automation. As the industry moves towards smart factories, how robots are used in manufacturing is changing, as shown, for example, by the emergence of cobots and the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in industrial settings. Now, manufacturers of all sizes, from the automotive, electronics, pharmaceutical, medical and consumer products sectors, are adopting robotic automation. Even the farming sector is benefitting from these developments.

The BioNTech SE biotechnology company, based in Mainz, Germany, has converted an existing facility in Marburg, also in Germany, in record time, with assistance from Siemens, to make it suitable for the production of the COVID-19 vaccine. The production plant has been producing the active substance since February and the vaccine BNT162b2 (also known as COMIRNATY), since the end of March. BioNTech acquired a production facility for this in the fall of 2020, that was already equipped with capabilities for producing biotechnological substances. Through collaboration with Siemens and the team of experts on site in Marburg, the project timeline for converting the existing facility to make it suitable for the production of mRNAvaccine was cut, from around one year down to five months, and the implementation of key parts of the new Manufacturing Execution System (MES) was reduced to two and half months. The new system and end-to-end digitalisation of production enable ‘paperless documentation of production’, which can immediately fulfill all documentation requirements. The entire process flow is controlled using Siemens products. The Opcenter Execution Pharma MES is used to orchestrate subsystems and processes and to analyse their quality. Production processes can be automatically developed, optimised and managed. mRNA processes encompass a number of manual work steps, such as weighing, which can now be performed by Siemens weighing systems, ensuring precise measurement of weight, which is vital for product quality. All systems were modified for automation using the Simatic PCS 7 process control system, which controls and regulates the system processes. Other products used include network technology, WLAN access points, communication technology and the TIA Portal engineering framework. Siemens supports system implementation for production startup at BioNTech with in-depth service and on-call readiness. Siemens and BioNTech enjoy a long tradition of collaboration and have intensified their cooperation for COVID-19 vaccine production.

The BioNTech SE biotechnology company based in Mainz, Germany, has converted an existing facility for the production of the COVID-19 vaccine in record time, with assistance from Siemens. Image: BioNTech SE 2020.