In the current unpredictable market, only the smartest and fastest manufacturers will be able to achieve smooth operations through streamlined production and service delivery. To help ambitious manufacturers master and capitalize on this uncertainty, Patvin Engineering deploys customized scalable Cobotic Automation Solutions delivering advanced accuracy, precision, adaptability, flexibility, and speed, apart from high ROI.
Master 5 Uncertainties With Co-Bots
Covid times is a learning time. It taught us how to survive and how to keep going in the times of crisis like these. But what if, you prepare yourself for such tough times. That too smartly!!!! But how?
1. Support The Available Workforce. Don’t Eliminate Them.
Cobots in manufacturing was met with skepticism during covid times. Because it was looked upon something that eliminates workforce. But that is a wrong conception. Everybody might have a different opinion but still we did not observe any slump in the sector in past one year or more; rather the automotive industry in India is known to be the earliest adopter of advanced automation solution. Collaborative Robots or Co-Bots are specially designed to Co-work along humans. Cobots only partially automates the repetitive tasks that your human workforce does, still giving huge returns in the process. They just assist your workers ease off with the difficult tasks at hand by bringing in consistent repeatability and accuracy, that too safely. Hence deploying Partial Automation will only help your manpower and not eliminate them.
2. Eliminate Skilled Dependency/Labor Gap
Manpower issues can be addressed. But a continuous search for “Skilled Manpower” is still a primary challenge for almost all manufacturing executives. Especially skilled manpower for critical and stressful applications like glass gluing, dispensing, spraying, palletizing, etc. And the situation does not appear ready to improve any time soon. On top of it retaining the skilled manpower remains the second most challenge everywhere. Quitting, changing jobs, migrating, injuries, etc leads to direct or indirect cost to manufacturers that matches or exceed losses in production capacity. Sometimes it directly effects the bottom line of the company too. These also includes hiring temporary workers, opportunity loss, the blow to morale resulting in wide productivity losses, and additional administrative burdens to manage an employee’s return to work.
Deploying a Cobot on your shop floor will not only reduces your dependency on the “skilled” manpower requirement but also it enables to multiply the value of an enterprise’s human assets by freeing workers to tackle higher productivity processes and acquire new skills for a modern manufacturing age. By combining productivity and quality gains with safer workplaces, Cobots will be an important component in the solution to the manufacturing labor gap today and tomorrow.
3. Eliminate Stress On Available Manpower
The top five types of workplace injuries include contact with harmful objects, overexertion, slips and falls, repetitive motion, and contact with harmful substances/chemicals. Manufacturing automation—and Cobots in particular—can help reduce or eliminate three out of the five leading causes for workplace injuries: contact with harmful objects, heavy lifting, and repetitive stress injuries, essentially reducing the incidence of workplace injuries by up to 72 percent.
Cobots can protect more workers in applications that were beyond the ability of traditional production equipments. Cobots are capable of operating 24×7 – alongside with humans; and they are not affected by repetitive and potentially dangerous tasks like machine tending, welding, spraying, dispensing, painting, and assembly thus resulting in lowering stress on human workforce thereby creating a safer environment for workers. This in long term will help in employee retention and increasing happiness quotient of employees leading to higher productivity at work and improved focus.
Target consistent quality by reducing human errors:
- 40-60% reduction in repeated manual processesdue to human errors
Automating manual processes can increase accuracy by 100%. This translates into more efficiency within your production environments.
- 30% Reduction in Quality Issues
Cobots help Improve quality control with innovative and repeatable testing for lower production downtime and fewer production issues.Also taking over the factory’s most repetitive and strenuous tasks means Cobots not only help reduce injury, they also help human workers upskill to more valuable roles, such as programming and maintaining the cobots, which can significantly improve employee morale, focus and output. Thus improvising on quality production.
5. Keep Your Lines Running 24×7 When Required
Manufacturing facilities are particularly vulnerable to changes in market conditions, and the ability to adapt their operations to these changes quickly is critical. Meeting deadlines is imperative because of increased competition in the market. Operation must run 24×7. But while finding the skilled workforce and retaining them tops the list of challenges faced by manufacturing executives, filling the labor gaps while you must meet a deadline precedes the list. Plus you cannot keep the human asset ideal when there must be a supposed gap in production facility.
Cobots are essentially sophisticated tools that are flexible to use anytime in need. The manufacturer is now able to run 24×7, thanks to cobots enabling a third 8-hour shift, thereby increasing the productivity of the production line. This instance gives hope to many other MSMEs and SMEs that are looking forward to increasing their agility and bringing new products in the market and increasing their productivity.
