Robotics to enhance productivity & flexibility of the manufacturing industry

Robotics, an interdisciplinary sector of science and engineering, dedicated to the design, construction and use of mechanical robots.  The world has witnessed that today's organizations are in different places on the road to Robotics. In a recent interaction with the Editor of Siliconindia, Rajesh Nath, MD, VDMA, shared his insights on how robotics is helping manufacturing industry. 

Share your the thoughts on how Robotics has improved the manufacturing industry.

As far as the manufacturing domain is concerned, we are looking at increasing productivity, flexibility, and resilience & sustainability of operation, especially after covid. When we look at all these factors, robotics can support such operations. The typical application of robots in manufacturing can be summed under the five D's. The first D is operations that are dangerous in nature. The second one is difficult operations which perhaps humans cannot perform. The third D is conditions which are dirty, where there is a hazardous condition, and there robots work well. Fourth, D is a delicate operation that is very critical in nature. In addition, after the pandemic, the fifth D is for distancing, where you have to maintain social distance. So, when we look at these five D's for such operations, the robots have good application and can work in manufacturing.

How do you see the usefulness of Robotics in small scale industries?

When we look at small-scale and midsize industries, as per my knowledge, it is a good application area for Cobots which are basically collaborative robots. These are a little different from the traditional industrial robots. Cobots work hand in handtogether with the human. And results have also shown that Cobots have been applied in the manufacturing process in such cases. In fact, the productivity has increased; I think a study done showed that the productivity had risen almost 35 to 40% when Cobots have been used in the manufacturing process. Additionally, not only the productivity but, because of the application of the Cobots, the output quality has also increased.

Hence, cobots fit well into the application area for small and midsize companies. Another advantage of the cobots is also they do require limited space when comparedto industrial robots. The traditional industrial Robots once installed, cannot be easily moved to another location because there's foundation and other civil work  required. In comparison,cobots can be mounted on tables, the table's position could be moved from one end of the factory or the line to the other end of the line. That is why I strongly feel that the cobots should fit well in SME operations.

Moreover, the last advantage is the cost-benefit. It is because cobots are not so costly. One can get as per the application, and they can also perform jobs where lifting up to say 20 kilos is required

Inspection is one of the critical stages in manufacturing. Therefore, how robots are performing in that segment?

Here we can clearly see the advantages of robots. Inspection requires laborious & manual job and hazardous conditions where there is toxic gas or heat or temperature application, even conditions are generally inaccessible for humans. For example, going into the pipeline would be very tough for humans when the diameter is small. So, the robots fit very well for an inspection operation in such cases. And also, what we have seen, if you have a vision system for cameras mounted on the arm of the robot, it gives added flexibility. Unlike the normal inspection process, where you have only sample parts that can be inspected, the robot is not constrained only to sample parts, and it processes quite fast. Hence, in that way, you can inspect all the parts rather than confining yourself only to sample parts. As it helps the whole production process, it will help in the productivity, and better quality, because you're checking all the parts. For the inspection process of pipelines, storage tanks, the automotive sector, the aerospace sector, to name a few, the robotics application is quite useful.

What is the fortune of India in terms of Robotics?

I would like to share some statistics and figures. It is surprising when we look at the number of robots sold worldwide in 2020. Despite the pandemic situation, there has been a slight increase in the sale of robots in the year. According to the International Federation of robotic, 3,84,000 robots were sold in 2020 worldwide. China is a big market, and its sale was about 1,68,000. There is a term called Robo-destiny, which means the number of robots used per 10,000 workers. So, the global robot density is about 126. It means 126 robots per 10,000 workers. When we look at the scenario in India, globally, we are ranked 12th when it comes to robot installation. Hence, the peak of robots sale in India was in 2018 that is around 4771 robots.

China, Japan, the United States, the Republic of Korea and Germany remain the five major markets for industrial robots. These countries account for 76% of global robot installations (a plus of 3% points). China has been the world’s largest industrial robot market since 2013 and accounted for 44% of total installations in 2020. Robot installations in Japan dropped roughly, but still accounted for 10% of global installations. The United States accounted for 8% of robot installations in 2020, holding a narrow lead over the Republic of Korea (almost 8%). Germany is the fifth largest robot market in the world, accounting for almost 6% of the global robot installations in 2020. (Source - International Federation of Robotics (IFR))

However, the pandemic certainly impacted the sale of robots in India as around 3,212 robots were sold in 2020. India undoubtedly has a long way to go, and when we look at the robot density, though the world average is about 126 robots per 10,000 workers, in India, it is about six robots per 10,000 workers. So, I think India needs to catch up with the world conditions of using robots, but we are gradually seeing applications of robots being utilizedin industry.

Another change I would like to highlight is that, whereas, traditionally, it was the automotive industry, which was the biggest user of robots, in 2020 there is a slight change in trend. Now, it is the electronic industry has overtaken the automotive industry. Hence, the application of robots in the electronic industry has increased, and it is now higher than in the automotive industry.

In India besides the application of robots in the automotive industry, there are other areas like the electronic industry, application in the glass industry, handling high-temperature products in the foundry and the metrology industry also.

Therefore, these are all the areas where we will see the growth of robotics. In addition, Cobots are being introduced in India, and indeed, cobots are more flexible than industrial robots. The number of applications of cobots would also increase in India in the times to come.

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