You are here:Home1/Blog2/Blog Article Automation Trends 2024
BLOG POST
The future of production
Data-driven programming of tactile robots in response to four key automation trends in 2024
The manufacturing industry is currently in a highly dynamic environment that requires a change in essential concepts and the implementation of production processes. Four key trends are currently shaping automation and putting the manufacturing industry under considerable pressure to transform. The answer to these challenges lies in the integration of tactile robots and their data-driven programming.
From increasing automation and the complex requirements for flexible production systems to shorter delivery times despite greater supply chain obstacles: there are four key trends that are currently shaping automation and will represent the central challenge for production managers and automation experts in the coming years. How can companies address these and respond effectively to key issues such as labor shortages, increasing product and variant diversity, the complexity of components and changing supply chain requirements?
2024: Four automation trends and their consequences
Trend 1: Labor shortage
Across Europe, companies are struggling to find workers for simple, manual tasks and to retain them after the training phase. Demographic and cultural changes mean that workers are increasingly less willing to perform manual or monotonous tasks. The age of manual labor is rapidly coming to an end.
Trend 2: Variety of variants (High Mix/Low Volume)
Despite all standardization approaches such as modular kits, module groups and so on, product diversity and the number of variants continue to increase. This poses enormous challenges for automation in particular and makes it more difficult to simplify production processes or individual sub-processes. Production must be able to adapt flexibly to the characteristics of each individual variant and be set up in such a way that even small batches can be produced economically.
Trend 3: More complex components
Complexity is not only driven by variant diversity. Electronic integration in mechatronic products and subsystems is also continuing to increase. Components are increasingly being equipped with sensors, network and computer components. This increases the demands on the overall production process, as very sensitive components now have to be manufactured and assembled with high precision in more and more sub-steps. Inaccuracies and rough handling processes can quickly lead to component failure if individual electrical components are damaged.
Trend 4: Shorter delivery times in conflict with major supply chain obstacles
Shorter product life cycles, just-in-time and just-in-sequence requirements, greater competitive pressure and much more are forcing manufacturers to achieve shorter and precisely plannable delivery times. At the same time, overloaded logistics, geopolitical instability, strong price fluctuations and much more are creating major supply chain obstacles. As a result, the time and organizational demands on production have recently increased massively. It must become more resilient to unforeseeable changes in the supply chain.
How can we counter these trends?
The most obvious approach to countering the decline in available labor is arguably automated production, which can also bring further benefits such as quality gains, assurance and increased productivity. However, this is countered by the three other current trends that often prevent cost-effective automation using a traditional approach. Therefore, new concepts need to be developed, integrated and implemented.
The only possible solution is a process that combines the best of both worlds: Robotic automation must be expanded to include the flexibility of human skills.
One promising solution is tactile robots with spatial vision that are flexible, largely self-configuring and can be used in a variety of ways. With the ability to orientate and reconfigure themselves independently, challenges such as variant diversity, complex components and tight time requirements can be addressed without having to rely on the flexibility of a human at every step.
The basic hardware, i.e. robots and sensors, is already sufficiently available. The big challenge is to combine the components in such a way that added value is created for the respective production process without negatively impacting the economic efficiency for the machine operator. As the processes are becoming increasingly complex, the programming of the systems is evolving to be more demanding. The number of parameters to be set, and their interrelationships, can quickly become so extensive that they can no longer be solved by a process developer in a reasonable amount of time.
At the same time, the ability to see and feel and its integration into classic industrial robots are a future indispensable approach that can be tackled in a standardized way. Complex software only needs to be programmed once and can be applied to different processes. In the best case scenario, the processes can be automatically adapted using sensor data, i.e. optimized on a data-driven basis. This opens up optimization potential that cannot even be achieved by human experts.
The challenge is to enable a type of robot programming that allows existing processes and process development methods to be adapted as easily as possible. No manufacturing company can convert its entire production and replace its systems in one fell swoop. It must therefore be possible to easily add the new capabilities to individual production steps.
RAEng Publications auf Pixabay
Flexible through software-driven robotics
The essential core of adaptive robotics is intelligent software: both the programs that are executed on the robot controller and the tools for their targeted implementation and maintenance must be data-driven. As trend one – the shortage of skilled workers – has also a relevant impact here, the automation of the development of production processes, e.g. through the use of AI, also comes into play alongside the automation of production.
The markets of tomorrow are open to the manufacturing companies that know how to extract the opportunities offered by software-driven robotics most quickly and consistently.
To help companies meet new and changing requirements, ArtiMinds Robotics specializes in the development of software solutions that enable the automatic generation of adaptive, flexible and robust production processes. The strengths of the software solutions lie in the simplified integration of tactile robots with spatial vision into data-driven process automation and in the gradual integration of state-of-the-art technologies such as artificial intelligence. At the same time, robustness, traceability and compatibility with existing conditions are taken into account. This allows the degree of automation of individual production steps to be successively increased. The software solutions also enable reliable, data-driven, automated development and optimization of robot programs. The support provided by ArtiMinds software reduces the effort involved in manual robot programming and allows manufacturing companies to adapt more quickly and flexibly to future trends.
In order to maintain high repeatability and process stability even for large quantities, Primus Präzisionstechnik automated the assembly of a gear unit using a flexible robot cell. The vision- and force-controlled application was programmed with ArtiMinds RPS.
With this white paper, we want to provide you with guidance for your automation plans. To help you to avoid typical pitfalls when using robots, we highlight the top 5 underestimated challenges and stumbling blocks when getting started in robotics and provide you with helpful tips and interactive checklists.
