Robots drive return to local manufacturing

Citation

(2005), "Robots drive return to local manufacturing", Industrial Robot, Vol. 32 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2005.04932fad.003

Robots drive return to local manufacturing

Robots drive return to local manufacturing

Keywords: Robotics, Automation, United Kingdom

The flood of manufacturing from Britain to low cost economies may be slowing and reversing, with more companies turning to automation to reduce their costs.

This trend is increasingly apparent, according to Tony Jones Managing Director of systems integrator TEC Manufacturing in Melton Mowbray:

“The exodus was at its height say two or three years ago and many people were predicting the total demise of manufacturing in Britain. But we noted that the most switched-on companies were not so enamoured with the idea of trying to co-ordinate operations halfway around the world.”

“They had the same cost pressures as everyone else but preferred to invest in on-site automation so that they kept all their activities physically close together. And now we are definitely seeing people bringing their manufacturing back and automating as they do so!”

The increase in business has encouraged TEC to become distributors for the Mitsubishi Electric range of robots, and Jones says there is a level of interest in robotic solutions that has never been apparent in the UK before.

Mitsubishi has just extended its offering in articulate arm robots with three new six-axis models (Plate 3).

Plate 3 Mitsubishi has just extended its offering in articulate arm robots

The largest robots can handle payloads of up to 12 kg to a radius of 1.4 m at class- leading speeds while maintaining a repeatability of 0.05 mm. Their controllers can interface with automation, production control, materials handling and vision systems and include a number of work cycle optimisation features such as conveyor tracking and crash avoidance. Other controller features include a redundant safety circle, additional eight-axis control, automatic service date calculation, multitasking operation and powerful programming language.

Outside of volume automotive assembly and a few other key sectors, the UK robot population has been very low to date. Jones says that there are three reasons for this:

“Until recently the cost of a robot was such that you could build a bespoke mechanical handling system for the same money. There was the chicken-and-egg lack of confidence in which potential users would not commit to robots because not enough other people had done so before them. And the technocratic reason was that manufacturing lines did not previously need the flexibility offered by robots, but with short-run production now the norm they are now often the best – if not only – solution.”

Although TEC will have the full range of Mitsubishi robots at its disposal, it is expecting demand to be highest in the small but sophisticated six-axis units. The flexibility of multi-axis robots is such that they can switch from one task to another in seconds or can be redeployed to completely different duties with very little change over time.

TEC reckons to have installed 70-100 robot based systems over the last 25 years, covering a range of industries and duties such as spraying, welding, assembly and inspection and now expects to double that number rapidly.

For further information, please contact: Caroline Stanton, Mitsubishi Electric, Travellers Lane, Hatfield AL10 8XB. Tel: 01707 276100; Fax: 01707 278695; web site: www.industrial.meuk.com