Every business owner in the manufacturing industry knows that the key metric in any production facility is productivity. This is the measurement of produced goods over a single period of time. As such, management is constantly on the look out for ways to boost productivity of their facilities. This might come through skill upgrades of their employees and more commonly, the introduction of automation to the space.
How Automation Functions in a Production Facility
Industrial automation processes use control systems like robots or computer systems to monitor and take care of procedures and equipments. Automation in the commercial or industrial work environment gives the benefits of boosting productivity and quality while reducing mistakes and defects, raising safety, and adding versatility to the manufacturing process. In the end, industrial automation yields increased reliability, profitability, and safety.
Integrating Robots
It is significant that recent technological breakthroughs have conquered many of the conventional constraints of robotics and automation.
A brand-new generation of robotics that are more functional and flexible, and cost much less, than those made use of in several manufacturing environments today can be “educated” by frontline personnel to perform jobs previously thought to be overly challenging for machines– tasks such as choosing and packing irregularly spaced objects, and settling wiring problems in large-scale jobs in, for example, the aerospace sector.
A good example of easy to integrate automation is the automatic labeling machine which ensures accurate labelling of all products. This in turn allows for easy product ID identification and data entry in the later stages of the production process.
Avoiding People Fatigue & Burn Out
Generally, humans dislike mundane and repeated jobs. When they are made to do these tasks for a period of time, they experience burn out, leading to a lack of motivation and interest in the job. Mistakes then arise since we are not performing at our best nor are we concentrating on the job at hand. The cost of these mistakes manifest themselves in the form of product defects.
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Defects in particular are a killer for the production facility as they require additional resources to put in to be found, rectified and possible be disposed of. As such, facilities that are able to lower their defect rate see significant increases in productivity and profits.
Making a Smarter Process
Seldom discuss in the automation process is data collection and utilisation. Automation involves the accurate collection of data in real time. No more unintended information entry or human errors leading to missing data input. Leveraging data can supply these solutions apart from a basic list of pass/fail stats from the past. Relationship of affiliated process information with pass/fail records gives understanding instead of guessing “what is creating this?”.
