CAN AUTOMATION SAVE OUR MANUFACTURING?

It also means, however, that the manufacturer must think about the upstream and downstream operations to determine what additional operations may be able to be performed. Of course, this is contingent on having adequate cycle time and means that the longer the machining, the more likely the robot can have time to do additional operations.

IMPROVED ERGONOMICS
One of the best reasons to automate is to remove an operator from a difficult or dangerous operation. As a young co-op student at General Motors, I directly experienced plant assignments that required heavy parts to be unloaded from a bin to load a machine tool. Repetitive bending and heavy part lifting can often lead to injury and downtime. The use of robots can eliminate workmen’s compensation and also safety issues.

INCREASED QUALITY
There is one issue that can occur when a “blind” robot replaces an operator (in robot terminology, an operator is a “two-armed, fully articulated robot with 3D vision and with accurate tactile force control that is driven by a Cray computer”). The trained operator can perform part inspection of both the raw and finished part and can catch part non-conformities. Fortunately, the increasing use of built-in vision can allow the robot to 100 percent inspect both the raw and finished parts.

Since the use of 6? demands only 3.4 defects per million parts, there is an advantage of using a sighted robot over an operator. If an operator only experiences a defect after processing over 250,000 parts, there may not be any guarantee that the operator will find all the defects. A properly programmed robot can perform 100 percent visual inspection and will find the 3.4 defects per million. 

ELIMINATE FIXTURES
The use of part fixtures to accurately maintain part position can be both costly and also limit the ability of the system to process more than one type part. Fortunately, the use of vision can be used to eliminate the need for fixtures by identifying and locating randomly-oriented parts. If a part is “well behaved”, meaning it sits flat on a surface, the robot can make use of 2D vision to find parts on a belt conveyor. The vision system can also identify the part and send notification of the type of part that is being loaded to the machine tool.

If a part does not sit flat, but rather can sit on an angle or if the part is on a pallet that can tip the part from vertical, the robot can use 3D vision to find the part and provide the proper offset for the robot to pick it up. For those that are using fixtures, the question should be asked if they are needed for other aspects of the system. If they are not, they can be eliminated by using vision guidance with the net effect of both a cost savings and additional flexibility.

SUMMARY
I think the decisions that manufacturers make today as to whether to move off-shore or to automate their local facilities will have long-range effects, not just for our generation, but also those of our children and our grandchildren. Back in 1900, the U.S. was largely an agrarian society with 38 percent of our labor force involved in the labor-intensive job of farming. Since wages were cheaper in South America, there were calls to stop farming in the U.S. and move our agriculture to South American countries. We know that this did not occur. 

Instead, American ingenuity gave us tractors and superior techniques for planting, fertilizing, and irrigation. The net effect is that with only two percent of the workforce involved in farming, the U.S. continues to set production records and remains a major exporter of agricultural products. This is clearly a better outcome for our society than being a net importer of South American product.

Today we in manufacturing are at a crossroads. Whole industries such as consumer electronics have already been lost, but we can make a decision to “make our stand”. If your machine tools are manually tended today, you are in danger of losing out to a country with lower wages that manually tends similar machine tools. If, however, you make a decision to automate, you can produce more products on your existing assets while improving your quality and increase the competitiveness of your business.

As for me, I’m rooting for American manufacturing.