Why cobots hold the key to unlocking the next level of operational efficiency in large companies

My LinkedIn inbox has been busier than usual over the last couple of weeks, since I shared an opinion piece on Forbes titled "The Reinvention Of The Manufacturing Industry", exploring how a new generation of advanced robotics is helping to democratize manufacturing, making robots affordable for companies of all sizes.

Several of my professional contacts have reached out to ask: Are collaborative robots really for small and medium sized companies then? ?We know this is not true, and so I need to offer some further explanation.

Since the inception of mechanization and mass production processes at the start of the last century, the tools large manufacturers have used to drive competitiveness and efficiency have been geared towards using ‘size’ as an advantage -- Economies of scale ... Large industrial robots for high-volume low-mix tasks ... Large budgets to fund efficiency programs like Lean and Six sigma ... The ability to outsource labor at scale to anywhere with ease.

However, these levers designed for big companies didn’t work for smaller businesses. That’s why new age advanced robotics led by collaborative robots and autonomous mobile robots have been a game changer for many small to medium enterprises. But it’s not where the cobot story ends. Or ironically, even began.

For the large manufacturers, the competitive pressure drove need for differentiation which increased product variations.? You can feel that on the assembly line of every large manufacturer today.? But, several of the large manufacturers are still stuck with the old tools (designed for low-mix high-volume manufacturing) on this new reality where each of their factories and warehouses have increasingly high-mix and smaller batch sizes.? New age advanced robotics (like collaborative robots and autonomous mobile robots) are increasingly being used in the larger manufacturing floors to make operations nimbler & flexible while speeding up manufacturer’s speed to market.

The origin of the cobot

What few today realize, is that cobots were first designed with large companies in mind.

The founders of Universal Robots (UR) examined businesses already using industrial robots, and set themselves the challenge of creating something that was more easily reprogrammable for different functions across factory floors. With the competition larger manufacturers face today, the need for product variations for differentiation matters greatly, and the feeling is palpable when I walk the assembly lines of large manufacturers.?

The solution UR came up with? The world’s first commercially viable cobot – a child of two separate university research projects.

The first project sought to create a toy robot so easy to program that a child could do it in half an hour. The second project focused on the needs of the food industry in Denmark, which at the time, was looking for a more flexible approach to automation that would allow factory employees to reconfigure production lines to accommodate new products. Engineers that tried to build that flexibility into traditional industrial robots got nowhere – it was simply impossible for workers on the factory floor to learn how to reprogram the technology that existed.

The above projects came together, and the rest (as they say) is history. The result was an easily programable, highly versatile robot.

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The use of cobots in large organizations today

The global market for collaborative robots was expected to hit $1.6 billion at the end of 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 26% to 2026, as predicted?by Research and Markets. This increase was attributed to a rise in both smart factories, and growing demand in the Asia-Pacific region.

While true that cobots are democratizing robotics, they have always been of great use to large companies. But I believe large manufacturers are yet to fully embrace the capabilities they offer. Solid economic drivers for increased uptake are present, including labor and skills shortages, as recent research?suggests large companies have the tallest hill to climb when it comes to employee retention.

It is no wonder that many large companies – including major global corporations like Siemens, Toyota and Novo Nordisk – have fully integrating cobot technology into existing production set-ups to make operations more nimble and flexible.

The time has now come for large manufacturers to do this across the board.?In a competitive world, large companies have no choice but to increase agility at every turn. Slow down, and they risk falling foul to more nimble competition. New age robotics offer greater efficiency and speed to market, and large businesses need to board this train today, or risk getting left behind on the platform.

The integration of cobots and traditional industrial robots

What’s really exciting to witness too here, is how cobots are now working with traditional industrial cobots.

Retrofitting a production line with cobots tends to be fairly straightforward, partly because of the small footprint a cobot creates. Deeper integration between cobots and traditional industrial robots is often possible too now through the programmable logic controller.

But so much more can be done. The potential and opportunities awaiting large players in 2024 are colossal, and I can’t wait to see more embracing an all-encompassing automation process in manufacturing, positioning cobots to increase productivity, product quality and safety.

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Looking to the future: AI-enabled cobots and more sophisticated applications

As machine learning and AI-enabled cobot applications become more widely available, larger businesses are perfectly positioned to leverage this cutting-edge tech to support their complex and sophisticated business needs. From quality inspection using computer vision solutions, to handling high mix applications on the production floor, I see companies using cobots to improve costs and enhance customer satisfaction.

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Cobots have become user-friendly enough for even the smallest businesses, helping to democratize manufacturing. ?But they are also being paired with some of the world’s most sophisticated technologies, supporting global-scale companies in becoming more productive than ever. ?