COVER STORY MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC
Cobots enable effective high-mix, low-volume production
Oliver Giertz, product manager for Servo/Motion and robotics for the EMEA region at Mitsubishi Electric, Factory Automation, explains how collaborative robots are helping manufacturers drive down operational costs
by tailoring products more closely to customer demand. This, of course, carries with it an implicit reduction in batch sizes, and has seen the rise of ‘high-mix, low-volume’ production. Cobots can enable manufacturers to effectively meet individual customer requirements with greater product variety in smaller batches. While high-volume production, with its
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repetitive tasks, has seen increased adoption of traditional industrial robots, we have to think differently in a high-mix production environment effort to change from one product to the next can impact on productivity. In high-mix production, there might be several line changeovers needed in a given shift. For many manufacturers, this has meant an
increased reliance on manual labour. But that, in turn, increases operational costs when compared with high-volume production – and the greater the mix, the higher the emphasis on manual labour, and the greater the production cost for a given volume.
Further, high-mix, low volume (HMLV)
production requires more stringent quality control processes to be put in place, with the opportunity for production errors increasing as the batch sizes reduces. At the same time, the levels of changeovers between different products can often become a bottleneck. However, the new breed of collaborative
robots (or cobots) is responding to the trend of HMLV production, delivering the required processes quickly as well as easily.
IMPROVED FLEXIBILITY, CONSISTENCY AND RELIABILITY Designed to assist human operators on the
8 September 2024 Irish Manufacturing
www.irish-manufacturing.com
ith increased competition, often on a global scale, manufacturers need to differentiate themselves
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