Saving Time

Today’s Most Advanced Automation Systems Have Additional Capabilities Enabling Their Use In Environments That Have Not Been Suitable For Automation Up To Now

- Team MT

MANUFACTURING AUTOMATION HAS BEEN around since the 1970s. Much advances in technology, including robotics, big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things have improved factory production since then.

Cheaper, more capable, and more flexible technologies are accelerating the growth of fully automated production facilities. The key challenge for companies will be deciding how best to harness their power.

This “lights out” production concept—where manufacturing activities and material flows are handled entirely automatically—is becoming an increasingly common attribute of modern manufacturing. In part, the new wave of automation will be driven by the same things that first brought robotics and automation into the workplace: to free human workers from dirty, dull, or dangerous jobs; to improve quality by eliminating errors and reducing variability; and to cut manufacturing costs by replacing increasingly expensive people with ever-cheaper machines. Today’s most advanced automation systems have additional capabilities, however, enabling their use in environments that have not been suitable for automation up to now and allowing the capture of entirely new sources of value in manufacturing.

As robot production has increased, costs have gone down. Over the past 30 years, the average robot price has fallen by half in real terms, and even further relative to labor costs. As demand from emerging economies encourages the production of robots to shift to lower-cost regions, they are likely to become cheaper still.