More and more manufacturing entities are relying on technology to offer the market the best products. One of the major aspects of manufacturing taking advantage of robotic technology is material handling.
Manufacturing industry analysts have reported that robotic material handling is likely to experience the most growth in manufacturing. Here, robotic material handling refers to the use of conveyors, collaborative robots, and robotic arms.
Robotic material handling tasks include machine tending, palletizing, part transfer, pick and place among other tasks.
Robotic material handling offers numerous benefits to manufacturers including:
Speed
One major bottleneck that is solved by the use of robots for material handling is speed. Manual labor is slow. For example, an activity such as palletizing will take packaging robots less time than it will take a team of packers.
Manufacturers who have already used these robots can attest to this fact. These robots work at least four times faster than a team of human workers.
This means that the manufacturer can deliver finished products on time as they no longer have to spend hours packing. All they need now is a palletizing robot to stack the pallets and lift them into a truck. Ensuring that products are ready for shipping in minutes and not days.
Efficient Use Of Factory Floor Space
When you introduce material handling robots in your factory, you can plan your small manufacturing space efficiently. You will find that you can use modern storage technology that allows you to stack your products rather than have them on the floor.
With a robot, you can stack your materials and products higher. This ensures that a factory has more space to work that is not occupied either by raw materials or finished products. This enables the manufacturer to make more profits from the efficient use of space.
Improved Productivity
The use of material handling robots has also helped to boost productivity in manufacturing operations. This is seen in cases such as when machine tending tasks are automated and assigned to robots.
Robots are much faster than human beings in most tasks. Thus, there will be an increase in the speed of production immediately. Further, robots eliminate the inconsistency of human hands. They are highly accurate and precise thus which ensures that products are handled uniformly at all times.
Enhance Safety At The Factory
When a manufacturer introduces robots into their factory, they eliminate a lot of safety issues. Unlike traditional robots, modern robots are inherently safe. They consist of internal software that ensures that the robots slow their activity to reduce the chances of accidents happening.
Further, there are material handling tasks that may result in injury when carried out manually. For instance, lifting and carrying of heavy materials in the factory may cause different types of injuries and health problems.
This leads to absenteeism and other medical costs on the company as it takes care of its employees. All these affect the companies bottom line negatively.
Improves Employee Morale And Satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is an important factor when considering the working environment in the factory. When employees are satisfied with their working conditions, they have enhanced morale and work well, thus, enhancing total productivity.
The introduction of packaging and material handling robots helps boost morale and satisfaction in the employees. It does this by making work easier through automation, elimination of dangerous tasks, and also through the availability of work resources in robots at all times.
Improves Connection In Your Factory
With material handling robots introduced in the factory, you can connect your factory easily. With robot automation, you can connect other factory machines and devices. This enables you to collect data that can help transform your production processes in the factory.
Conclusion
Material handling robots have a range of tasks in the factory. They are assigned tasks in movement, protection, and handling of tasks. They make companies more efficient and help improve conditions for their employees.
