Up close & personal

Automated manufacturing of individual products, or ‘mass customisation’ is a concept which is becoming increasingly appealing in many industrial sectors and is being driven by changes in customers’ requirements as well as Industry 4.0. However, the personalisation of certain types of automatically manufactured products is hindered by limitations such as the inflexibility of existing production lines and high labour costs.

Meeting the challenges of ever-changing consumer demands and the implications associated with Industry 4.0 has focused attention on how to apply the latest technical developments in automated production and robotics as a way of meeting these complex challenges.

A good example of success in this type of production is a Slovenian start-up business AlpStories who produce personalised cosmetics and therapeutic products starting from a batch size of one. To make this possible, an industrial robot developed for laboratory environments by YASKAWA, a Motorman CSDA10F, has been successfully ‘employed’ by AlpStories to help fulfil the complex demands of their production requirements.

Personalisation

Simon Jereb, research & technical director of AlpStories, explains the concept: "We let customers put together their own natural cosmetics based completely on their own tastes and needs. By doing this our young company is following the basic principles of personalisation, creativity and simplicity."

In this case, the first step of the process is for customers to use the AlpStories website to specify the basic product they want. They then select packaging size and the appropriate skin type and based on this information, the customer receives product recommendations which can be changed at any time and in any way the customer chooses.  

Until now, this type of personalisation of automatically manufactured products was hindered by a combination of high labour costs, inflexibility in production systems and the absence of robots with the required levels of sophistication. However, thanks to modern robots, different product variations can be integrated in the regular manufacturing process without resulting in decreasing returns to scale.

Exceptionally versatile

The YASKAWA Motorman CSDA10F dual-arm robot employed at AlpStories was originally developed for use under laboratory conditions and its multi-functional tools and grippers make it exceptionally versatile. It can also ‘learn’ completely new work sequences quickly and easily. Furthermore, the robot used at AlpStories has its own name of ‘Balthazar’ including a smile (part of a special design solution) which customers can view themselves via live streaming online after completing the production process. A personalised video is also shipped with each product showing how it was made.

As the AlpStories application illustrates, highly sophisticated levels of automated production are possible using modern, dual-arm robots such as the Motorman range, which meet the challenges of implementing complex products starting from a batch size of 1 and for many processes requiring small series production.