“With ROI Results Even the CFO Will Like,” Cobots Could Close the Skills Gap [Q&A]

Source: David Mantey for Thomas Insights

Manufacturers face a myriad of challenges, including labor, skills shortages, productivity, turnover, product quality, and capital utilization. Unfortunately, these challenges aren't likely to go away anytime soon. However, the emergence of collaborative robots, or cobots, has helped many industrial companies mitigate these concerns quickly with a long-term solution.?

We recently sat down with Joe Campbell, senior manager of applications development and strategic marketing at Universal Robots, to discuss how cobots can benefit manufacturing companies and how to find a "happy medium" through upskilling the workforce and utilizing advancements in automation. Universal Robots is a Danish manufacturer of flexible industrial collaborative robot arms.?

David Mantey (DM): Has the U.S. manufacturing sector fully realized the potential for collaborative robots??

Joe Campbell (JC):?In many respects, it's virtually impossible to realize the full potential of cobots. Even here at Universal Robots (UR), we are continually impressed by the innovative uses our customers find for our technologies.?

Today's cobots can handle higher payloads and provide longer reach than their predecessors. For example, the recently launched UR20 can handle payloads up to 20 kg (44.1 lbs) and provides a reach of 1,750 mm (68.9 in), alongside up to 65% increase in speed and a 25% increase in joint torque capability.?

To take just one example, the latest cobot-powered welding systems can perform more complex welds than their early predecessors. Hardfacing and plasma cutting are new features many cobot welders now handle. Complex cuts on 3D shapes, multipass welding, thru-arc seam tracking, water-cooled torches, and touch-sensing capabilities on the latest cobot welding systems enable applications that just weren't possible a few years ago.?

Cobots are adaptable platforms that enable a massive range of manufacturing applications, from welding, machine tending, and screw-driving through inspection, packaging, and palletizing. Considering the levels of adaptability and mobility, and ongoing enhancements to our cobots and additions to the UR+ ecosystem, it's almost impossible to realize the full potential of our collaborative robots.?

Rather than trying to deploy their cobots on every task a cobot could handle, manufacturers can (and should) find the right cobot to address their application needs, start with simple applications, and build up from there.?Today, cobots are the fastest-growing segment of the industrial robot sector.?

DM: Can the U.S. find a "happy medium" in which an upskilled workforce and advancements in automation close the labor and skills gap?

JC:?A "happy medium" can be found, but it is by no means certain that this will happen. The demographics don't look good: 10,000 baby boomers retire from the workforce every day. Nearly half of all millennials, Gen-X and Gen-Z, are simply not interested in careers in the manufacturing sector.??

Automation is the only way to plug those labor gaps and keep production at reasonable levels. Due to their ease of use versus traditional industrial automation, cobots can be used to upskill workers from general operatives to robot operators, freed from the unergonomic and time-consuming manual labor of their pre-cobot working life. Cobots are a key part of the solution to the labor crisis.

DM: What challenges can U.S. manufacturers solve with cobots?

JC:?The labor crisis is the top of U.S. manufacturing sector challenges, and companies of all sizes are finding that cobots provide an affordable and flexible way to plug critical labor gaps and minimize costly, labor-related downtime. Supply chain vulnerabilities are also on manufacturing executives' minds. Cobots are helping by handling a wide range of tasks.?

On the practical application side, cobots help manufacturers solve problems across multiple domains. For example, they can be deployed on assembly, machine tending, and quality inspection tasks. In fact, many jobs can be performed by cobots, from dispensing, material handling, and welding to finishing, material removal, packaging, and palletizing.?

DM: What are the manufacturing challenges that can't be solved right now but might be in the near future?

JC:?One of the most exciting developments over recent years is the growing intersection between cobots and artificial intelligence (AI) platforms. As these AI platforms grow in capability, we expect to see innovative new applications emerge that bring the best of machine learning and deep learning into the cobot realm.?

This process is well underway. For example, MathWorks created MATLAB, a set of software tools and algorithms for designing, simulation, and testing cobot-powered applications. MATLAB allows robot engineers to create sophisticated cobot applications that incorporate machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, optimization, sensor fusion, and advanced signal processing.?

DM: What is the next big step in fully realizing the benefits of cobots for businesses?

JC:?Education. Not the education of technical resources but the education of business owners, officers, general managers, and others with profit and loss (P&L) responsibility. At UR, we are working hard to connect collaborative automation solutions with business problems. We're teaching this class of leaders how cobot automation can impact both their top-line revenue and bottom-line profits and how improvements can be measured in months, not years.

The challenges manufacturing organizations face — labor, productivity, employee turnover, quality, and capital utilization — are not going away. And collaborative automation can deliver solutions quickly and incrementally, with ROI results even the CFO will like.