Industrial Thinking from Automata

Eva can be programmed to integrate with a multitude of other systems, including a Cognex smart camera.

Small and medium manufacturers, particularly in the UK and Europe, thrive on low volume, high mix production, which provides them with opportunities for flexibility and versatility.  But it also comes with a lot of challenges. At Automata, our mission is to democratise robotics for everyone and as part of that, we have been conducting research with our customers to try and understand their pains and challenges. The most common themes that emerged were:

• The need to lower the cost of production to main profitability.
• Fluctuations in demand across the year that cannot be predicted.
• Spikes in customer orders, often with short turnaround times, preventing manufacturers from operating at full capacity.
• Shifts in the workforce, often coupled with the need to bring on and train temporary staff.
• Ensuring consistent repeatability in testing.
• Concerns for staff welfare, who may become bored of performing the same menial tasks.

Do any of these challenges match what you’re seeing in your organisation? Then read on...

Picture this - it’s Thursday and an important customer has just put in an order which needs to be delivered Monday. There’s no way to fit it into Friday’s production schedule. You’re going to have to pull a double shift. Probably will have to cancel your weekend plans as well.

We had a similar situation in the office recently with our 3D printers - I needed to do a large batch print over the weekend, so would have to be there to manually remove them from the print bed. However, I didn’t fancy spending my weekend in the office, so I got Eva, our simple affordable robot, to do it. Below is a short video of the result, followed by an overview of how I set it up.

Here in the UK, adoption of robots for manufacturing is significantly lower than in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the USA.

Whether that's due to worries that robots will take away jobs rather than create them, or simply not enough investment in the sector, we're well aware that many of our potential customers have a complex journey ahead of them.

Just glance at the cover of any of the glossy industry magazines and it looks like just about everyone in the UK is talking about robots. But there's a difference between 'knowing you'll have to start thinking about robots soon' and being ready to implement one on your production line. 🤔