Whether you run a mid-sized manufacturing plant or a small distribution warehouse, robotics is a solution you should consider.
Speed is of the utmost importance in business. For small businesses to remain agile, managers must strive to reduce bottlenecks wherever they occur.
In manufacturing, packaging and distribution, many bottlenecks are where one or more people are required to perform repetitive, mechanical tasks that create risk for repetitive motion disorders (RMDs), on the job injuries, and down-time.
While industrial pick-and-pack robots are astonishingly efficient, they require massive investments in time, programming, and isolation. Most industrial robots must be fenced off from human workers in the same facility.
A new generation of autonomous low-cost “cobots” have come on the market that work with and around your valued staff. One worker lifting a five pound battery from the ground and placing it in a harness every three minutes for seven hours a day is going to suffer extreme back pain and RMDs.
A $30,000 cobot, on the other hand, installed and programmed in a day, can perform the task night and day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year with only a couple of service hours downtime.
Even better, cobots work alongside humans. Most have human friendly fail-safes that halt the robot when it comes into contact with an obstacle. The effect of most cobot collisions is similar to bumping into someone in a hallway.
If you have an emerging production practice, your workers can “retrain” cobots easily with graphical user interfaces on handheld devices.
Contact us to find out if robots or cobots could help you improve your business.