Ten Ways Robots Enhance Lean Manufacturing Environments
Executive Summary
Traditionally, robots have not played a prominent role in the implementation of lean strategies. However, due to robots’ repeatability, speed, accuracy, and flexibility, the role of robots in lean implementations is constantly increasing. Automation equipment, which includes robots, is rapidly becoming a core component to lean manufacturing and the reduction of manufacturing costs.
Robotics has made it possible for manufacturers to vastly increase the scale of factory automation over the past three decades. With over 115,000 sold each year*, industrial robots have become a mainstay of all sizes and types of manufacturing facilities. This increase in robotic automation has resulted in higher production rates, and improved quality with decreased requirements for human intervention while elevating the nature of work by removing people from dull, dirty & dangerous tasks. Adding robotic automation, however, does not automatically make a manufacturing environment lean.
Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy focusing on the reduction of seven manufacturing-related wastes as defined originally by Toyota. The wastes are
- Overproduction (production ahead of demand)
- Transportation (movement throughout the process not required to build the item)
- Waiting (Work-In-Process (WIP) sitting and waiting for the next production step)
- Inventory (components, WIP, and finished product)
- Motion (people or equipment moving more than required to perform the processing of the part)
- Over Processing (due to the poor tool or product design creating activity)
- Defects (the effort involved in inspecting and fixing defects)
Robots are not innately lean since they could be used to automate a faster creation of waste, but they are often integrated within the manufacturing process to support and enhance a lean manufacturing system success criteria such as
- Repeatability - Robots drive product quality or consistency and reduce waste.
- Speed - Robots’ can help increase production and reduce wait time.
- Accuracy - Robots help to reduce scrap.
- Flexibility - Robots reduce training and changeover time – with a target of Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED), and often achieving One-Touch Exchange of Die, (OTED) goals. Ten Ways Robots Enhance Lean Manufacturing Environments.
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