Why Robotics?

If you are proposing a significant investment in plant and equipment, good preparation is a must. Whenever you are asked 'why robotics' it is important to have all the answers at your disposal. Whether it is your line manager or the chief executive, you will need to justify your decision in commercial terms. The principles upon which you base your decision should reflect the benefits of the investment to your company.

You may have an area in the factory which represents a bottleneck in the production process. This may be process, staff or quality related, or all three. The justification for introducing automation could be as follows:

Increase Output

Elimination of the problem area

Improvement in workflow

Reliability in the production process

Elimination of rework and the associated costs

Increased customer satisfaction due to reliable deliveries

Enhanced customer perception of your company as a quality supplier

A well planned application should be looking to achieve these sort of objectives. There will also be others unique to the problem that you are trying to solve.

In each instance you will probably be asked to look at the viable alternatives. This could mean staying manual with better equipment, increasing staff numbers, dedicated solutions, robot based automation or maybe even process change.

The robot system will be self selecting as a response to the problems which need to be addressed. Obviously product volumes, shift patterns, available funds, payback criteria, ROI, etc. are all contributors, but the opportunity to automate should be embraced as an opportunity to improve as many associated problem areas as possible.