The concept of lights-out automation and completely autonomous factory floors has long been painted as a utopian manufacturing philosophy – and why wouldn’t it be? A shop floor that can run 24×7, handled completely by error-free machines that don’t need breaks, recurring salaries, health benefits, or even supervision seems like the quintessential one. The stark reality, however, is that it is laden with unexpected obstacles.
Experts are increasingly advocating for using technologies such as collaborative robots, which unlock the potential of organizations to achieve positive-sum automation by focusing on both productivity and flexibility.
The dark reality of lights-out manufacturing
“Building a machine that builds the machine” has been a recurring theme in Elon Musk’s ideas for quite a while. Ironically, it was Tesla’s hyper-automated factory that made headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2018. The company missed self-imposed target after target owing to their overly ambitious assembly line for their first-ever mass-market car, the Model 3 (so highly anticipated, in fact, that Bloomberg created a Model 3 Tracker). Tesla’s overconfidence in lights-out operations ended up leaving the company stranded in what Musk described as “manufacturing hell,” where he admitted that excessive automation was a huge mistake. “Humans are underrated,” Musk confessed. However, Tesla has not been the only one to overestimate the benefits of dark factories and completely automated systems – numerous other leading manufacturers such as General Motors and Boeing have also had to learn from their mistake of undervaluing human instincts the hard way.
Challenges of traditional robots
There is a direct correlation between the adoption of robotics and the leading nations in manufacturing. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) 2022 World Robotics Report, India installed just about 5000 robots in 2021. In contrast, China led the world with almost 270,000 installations. Japan was second on the list, having deployed approximately 50,000 robots. The USA, Republic of Korea, and Germany followed suit.
Of course, India is a nation of unique challenges such as an abundant labor force and inequal access to technology, so this may not be unsurprising information. However, even 2018 U.S. Census data revealed that less than 10% of American manufacturers use robots. This speaks to the multitude of challenges associated with the industrial robots prevalent in the market today. They tend to be large, inflexible systems that require third-party consultants to program them. Because of no in-built safety features, they require a large chunk of valuable shop floor space, fencing, and/or safety scanners to keep factory floor workers safe. These factors, in turn, make light-out automation unattainable for most manufacturers, and massively inflexible for the few who do manage to implement it.
Enter the Collaborative Robot
In essence, a collaborative robot (or “cobot”) is a niche category of robots with advanced technology that makes them accessible to a much larger market. They are named for being able to share the same physical environment as humans (following an application risk assessment), thanks to their built-in safety features. This means they can often be deployed with little to no changes in the existing infrastructure. Also unlike their traditional robot predecessors, they are easy to program. The best-in-class cobots, in fact, can be installed by anyone, regardless of their experience with robots. This rapidly accelerates the speed of robot deployment, slashing downtime drastically. Best of all, a cobot can be re-tasked easily in-house for new applications, allowing manufacturers to consistently tackle ever-changing market conditions. They have transformed the robotics game, enabling automation in applications and industries that were previously unimaginable.
Denmark-based Universal Robots is considered the pioneer of cobot technology, leading the world with their collaborative robotic arms that can be used for various applications across industries. According to Sougandh KM, Sales Development Manager of Universal Robots’ South Asia branch, “We have over 50,000 cobots deployed globally as of today, and we are seeing a steady increase in demand from Indian manufacturers as they realize that they no longer need large amounts of land or even robotics experience to install a cobot. Some of our customers have even moved robots to new locations within their facility all by themselves, such as the L’Oreal team in Chakan, who uses our robots for end-of-line palletizing.”
Positive-Sum Automation
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched a Task Force on the Work of the Future in 2018 to tackle questions concerning the impact of technological disruption on humankind, and how emerging technologies could be harnessed for collective social benefit. Coleaders of MIT’s Work of the Future Initiative, Ben Armstrong and Julie Shah, speak of the importance of using robotics more strategically, and recently introduced the concept of “positive-sum automation.” This is a philosophy that promotes on not just focusing on productivity, which is the most common deciding factor in automation, but also flexibility – a factor that is often overlooked despite its impact on a manufacturer’s ability to adapt.
While there has been a lack of widespread adoption of automation technology, Armstrong and Shah suggest that when manufacturers do automate, they use a top-down approach, prioritizing productivity but ending up experiencing a zero-sum outcome. Here, the gains they make in efficiency are offset by reduced process flexibility. Traditional robots and automation methods are rigid, so re-tasking them is either complicated or expensive – if it’s even possible in the first place. Even just scheduled upkeep can cause production to come to a standstill.
Positive-sum automation, in contrast, starts with using a grassroots approach that first considers the perspective of line employees, empowering them to make recommendations based on their own first-hand experience. They are, after all, the ones closest to the shop floor, and know best what needs to improve. Building on this, Armstrong & Shah recommend that businesses choose technology that shop floor employees themselves can use, rather than needing to rely on external consultants. Their research found that using automation solutions that can be tasked and managed by line employees accelerate the ability of the individual – and manufacturers – to innovate.
Peer Robotics, a startup based in Gurgaon and Connecticut, is the manufacturer of collaborative autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that are used for autonomous material movement. Their unique Person2Peer technology enables anyone to easily task their robot to map a route instantly, using advanced haptic feedback. “Cost and complexity have always been the biggest barriers to robotics,” explains CEO Rishabh Agarwal. “We see the industry slowly moving towards overcoming these barriers, not with fixed automation, but by bringing humans in the loop. Therefore, our collaborative AMR aligns with the concept of positive-sum automation, as it was designed to be easily used by those who know the shop floor best: front-line employees.”
Better Metrics for Success
Armstrong & Shah also recommend choosing more relevant metrics for success, as opposed to solely performance indicators revolving around efficiency. Considering the more holistic benefits offered by positive-sum automation solutions like cobots, they suggest measuring success at three levels: the machine, the system, and the team.
The first level, i.e. the machine, looks at practical flexibility, such as how long the system takes to learn a new task compared to a human. The system level could consider how long it takes to deploy a new process. The third level is considered the most important, as it is human-centric. Metrics at this stage include exploring if the automation solution augments employee skills or enables them to effectively apply human ingenuity.
Conclusion
We are living in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, with unimaginable plot twists waiting at every turn. Automation is a double-edged sword, and if we’ve learned anything so far, it is that manufacturers do not need to take giant leaps to entirely machine-run operations to meet the needs of the market. Instead, we need to learn to work smarter, not harder, and the concept of positive-sum automation encourages us to expand our rather myopic view of automation. It promotes understanding how to leverage the best of humans and technology like cobots to leverage collaborative intelligence, developing flexible, dynamic operations that can be easily deployed and re-deployed as an organization’s needs evolve. It also encourages a nuanced approach to measure success, factoring both tangible gains like productivity and intangible benefits like employee satisfaction, fostering a more holistic worldview of automation that even small and medium-scale businesses can apply.