How robots can make manufacturing plants more efficient

THERE IS increasing pressure on manufacturing businesses to streamline processes, reduce costs and keep product quality at an all time high, despite rising costs and ever-decreasing access to top manufacturing talent. With that in mind, manufacturers are turning to autonomous solutions to improve production, accuracy and reduce costs over time, there’s never been a better time to invest in robots for manufacturing firms. From assembly and material handling to welding, painting and quality control, robots play a vital role in automating a whole host of tasks in the manufacturing industry.

From increased productivity and cost reductions to enhanced data collection and employee safety, robots come with a whole host of benefits for manufacturing businesses.

Increased productivity, quality and throughput

A key challenge for manufacturers is to ensure consistent quality of product, while also maintaining and optimising workflows to improve productivity. There’s a fine balance between potentially sacrificing quality for increased production, but with the integration of robots, this doesn’t need to be a problem.
Faster Processing: Automated systems operate at consistent speeds, which are normally much faster than that of humans, which ensures production cycles complete more quickly. Speed is essential in manufacturing, and when paired with autonomous robots that can continuously replicate high-quality products, there’s plenty of reason to invest in the technology.

24/7 operation: Robots play a key role in allowing businesses to work continuously without any breaks, vacations or shift changes. This obviously increases the output significantly. When paired with a human who can keep a close eye on things, and be on hand to carry out any maintenance or repairs, robots are a no-brainer for making your manufacturing plant run more smoothly.

Consistent precision and repeatability: Robots are capable of performing repetitive tasks with extremely high accuracy, which leads to reduced product variability and defects. They’re also able to replicate the exact same motion hundreds of thousands of times without the need for human intervention – which enables your manufacturing business to greatly increase output and lower quality issues.

Cost reductions

In today’s economy, there’s a consistent squeeze on businesses across all sectors to reduce costs, which is increasingly difficult with increasing overheads and material prices. While the initial investment in robotics can be hard to justify, the longer-term savings and flexibility offered by integrating autonomous technology into your existing workflow can be a gamechanger for manufacturers.

Lower labour costs: A reduction in human workers required for repetitive, dangerous or simple tasks, means your company’s labor costs will be significantly reduced thanks to the investment in robots. You’ll need to look at upskilling or investing in staff who can help keep things running effectively and understand and interpret data processed by robots, but this will inevitably mean you’ll need less manpower in your manufacturing plant.

Reduced time and material waste: Robots optimise workflows and reduce inefficiencies helping to reduce the amount of time required to create products. Along with this, their vastly improved accuracy vs humans ensures that material wastage is much lower. Pairing these two benefits reduces costs and improves your overall ROI.

Enhanced plant safety

Manufacturing related injuries in the US came in at a staggering 326,400 in 2023, and while this is a 6% year on year drop, more needs to be done to protect the safety of our skilled workers. Robots are a great way to automate especially dangerous tasks in the manufacturing plant, helping our manufacturing workforce to keep fit and healthy.

Handling Dangerous Tasks: One of the core tasks that robots can take on is high-risk jobs, such as welding and handling hazardous chemicals – which can pose significant risks to the workforce when tasks are carried out by a human. By offloading tasks like this to robots, your manufacturing business can vastly reduce workplace injuries, whilst also benefiting from improved accuracy and reduced downtime.

Taking on Physically Demanding Tasks: Robots are also capable of taking on physically taxing tasks, which most employees will actively look to avoid carrying out, especially on an ongoing, long-term basis. Having autonomous robots on hand to carry out such tasks is a huge benefit, improving employee well-being and reducing the likelihood of employees being off sick with injuries sustained from physically demanding tasks.

Flexibility and scalability

There’s an ever-increasing reliance on manufacturers being agile to new changes and customer demands, which can be particularly difficult with older workflows. Robots allow businesses to seamlessly retool for various tasks, giving manufacturers who have futureproofed the upper hand over competitors who have not.

Reprogramming speed: Modern robots are capable of being reprogrammed or retooled for various tasks. This enables manufacturing businesses to be agile and quickly adapt to any product changes, or the addition of new lines. There’s an ever-increasing requirement that manufacturing firms remain agile to the needs of their customers, and robots’ ability to quickly be reprogrammed into carrying out a totally different task can be a gamechanger for manufacturing firms of all sizes.

Modular integration: A key selling point for robots is their ability to be seamlessly integrated into specific parts of a new or existing production line, scaling up as required. The ability to scale as much as needed is a big selling point for manufacturing businesses that are going through periods of growth, equally, the ability to scale back on robots if production slows down too is useful.

Data collection and analytics

Data collection and analytics are an exceptionally important part of modern manufacturing, as it gives manufacturing managers access to insights to improve performance, outputs and quality – which inevitably improves overall costs and profits.

Real-time monitoring: Monitoring the performance of your assembly line, or general production can give some extremely interesting and potentially operations-changing insights to manufacturing plant managers. With insights available on cycle times, downtime and errors, there’s an added layer of data on hand to make informed decisions on.

Predictive maintenance: Reducing downtime of machinery is essential to the smooth operation of manufacturing. With robots integrated into workflows, data is available on when machines are likely in need of servicing, along with insights on when a machine might be on the brink of breaking down or becoming inefficient. This allows manufacturing managers to make informed decisions on when to decommission machinery and ensure that there’s no unplanned downtime in the plant.

Buddharatn Ratawal is senior manager, strategic business development for the DELMIA brand at Dassault Systèmes

https://www.3ds.com/products/delmia