Collaborative Robots Assume Tedious Tasks

Collaborative Robots Assume Tedious Tasks

I started out in a small shop. I had roles that encompassed purchasing, production/inventory control, manufacturing engineering, and even worked production when something needed done. 

So it was that one day I was trimming parts from a vacuum-formed plastic sheet using a bandsaw. Probably illegal today, may have been back then for all I know. Occasionally I would catch my mind drifting away. A guitar player, I’d pause and count fingers just to be sure.

Humans want jobs. But jobs that don’t challenge creativity and problem-solving but are only tedious, repetitive, mind-numbing can lead to tragedy.

A major reason robots gained such wide use especially in automotive manufacturing was that very problem along with removing humans from unsafe environments. Use robots when the task is dirty, dull, or dangerous.

The new breed of collaborative robots, or cobots, help expand robot’s usage into new areas of industry.

For example, this partnership just announced between Phillips Corp. and Universal Robots for loading and unloading CNC machines. Phillips Corporation, the largest global distributor of Haas CNC machines, offers a fast track to spindle uptime using Universal’s cobots.

“Having an expensive machine sit idle and missing out on orders due to lack of staffing is every manufacturer’s nightmare,” says Stu Shepherd, Regional Sales Director for the Americas division of Universal Robots (UR) that has already sold more than 1,000 UR cobots for tending Haas CNC machines. “This partnership between the largest distributor of the leading CNC brand and the leading collaborative robot brand offers a huge advantage for manufacturers, helping them solve staffing issues and stay competitive. We expect this new partnership to fast-track cobots in this sector, with significant advantages for manufacturers.”

With 9 offices representing 12 states throughout the South and Mid-Atlantic regions, Phillips Corporation boasts an installed base of more than 19,000 Haas CNC machines. “There is tremendous potential both for retrofitting existing installations with UR cobots and for getting through the door to new customers, offering turn-key solutions,” says president of Phillips Corporation’s commercial division, Michael Garner, who is also the chairman of Haas Automation’s North American distributor council. “We see a significant demand for cobots, which address labor shortages and also support manufacturers who need flexible automation tools they can operate without safety caging,” adds the Phillips president, stressing the UR cobots’ ease of programming. “There is no hardwiring or complex coding involved in getting a Universal Robot to communicate with a Haas machine since UR has solutions like the VersaBuilt software that facilitates two-way communication between the UR cobot and the CNC.”

VersaBuilt’s Haas CNC Integration Kit is a simple yet powerful interface that enables UR cobots to easily execute any machining program stored on the Haas CNC directly through the cobot’s own teach pendant, maintaining all Haas safety interlock features. Versabuilt is available through the UR+ platform, a showroom of products all certified to integrate seamlessly with UR cobots.

More than 60 different Haas models can be automated Universal Robots’ cobot arms. UR’s Stu Shepherd emphasizes how fast integration also means fast ROI. “Machine tending applications have consistently delivered an ROI of less than a year, sometimes even paying themselves back in a few months. A Haas-UR solution offered with Phillips’ CNC expertise and application know-how will help further improve that payback time.

Government versus Business

Government versus Business

I saw this note in today’s Espresso from The Economist, “France’s finance minister pledged to save jobs under threat at General Electric’s plant in the country’s north-east. The American industrial conglomerate, which made a loss of $23bn last year, had said it would cut around 1,000 jobs. Earlier this year GE paid France a €50m ($56m) fine for failing to create jobs after it took over Alstom’s energy business.”

Meanwhile in the US, officials are taking a second look at the results of Foxconn’s supposed multi-billion dollar investments. Politicians made great PR hay in 2017 with the announcement of a large investment in Wisconsin. Two years down the road, maybe the investment may not be so large and the employment a few thousand shy.

Governments can preach and give breaks and whatever, but market forces and bad management mean much more than governments for success. Take Alstom, for example. Perhaps there is French pride involved, but GE discovered that that particular acquisition was not all that it hoped for. One of a string of GE missteps. The French government can fine all it wants, but job creation depends upon good management and proper economic tailwinds.

I recently reported on the “success” of re-shoring manufacturing jobs, as the Reshoring Initiative would have it. Most likely it’s a result of financial analysts taking a closer look at supposed savings from only low wages discovering that other costs, such as logistics, insurance, loss of intellectual property, longer lead times, inability to quickly respond to changing markets all combined to make manufacturing offshore unappealing.

Most of the ills of manufacturing society I read about have a common root cause—less than competent management. I don’t see any quick fixes for that! And it won’t come from government fines generated by disappointment at lack of political gain.

Government versus Business

Modernizing Manufacturing Operations With AI

Artificial Intelligence, always known as AI, along with its sometime companion robots leads the mainstream media hype cycle. It’s going to put everyone out of jobs, destroy civilization as we know it, and probable destroy the planet.

I lived through the Japanese robotic revolution-that-wasn’t in the 80s. Media loved stories about robots taking over and how Japan was going to rule the industrialized world because they had so many. Probing the details told an entirely different story. Japan and the US counted robots differently. What we called simple pick-and-place mechanisms they called robots.

What set Japanese industrial companies apart in those days was not technology. It was management. The Toyota Production Method (aka Lean Manufacturing) turned the manufacturing world on its head.

My take for years based on living in manufacturing and selling and installing automation has been, and still is, that much of this technology actually assisted humans—it performed the dangerous work, removing humans from danger, taking over repetitive tasks that lead to long-term stress related injuries, and performing work humans realistically couldn’t do.

Now for AI. This press release went out the other day, “With AI, humans and machines work smarter and better, together.” So, I was intrigued. How do they define AI and what does it do?

Sensai, an augmented productivity platform for manufacturing operations, recently announced the launch of its pilot program in the United States. Sensai increases throughput and decreases downtime with an AI technology that enables manufacturing operations teams to effectively monitor machinery, accurately diagnose problems before they happen and quickly implement solutions.

The company says it empowers both people and digital transformation using a cloud-based collaboration hub.

“The possibility for momentous change within manufacturing operations through digital transformation is here and now,” said Porfirio Lima, CEO of Sensai. “As an augmented productivity platform, Sensai integrates seamlessly into old or new machinery and instantly maximizes uptime and productivity by harnessing the power of real time data, analytics and predictive AI. Armed with this information, every person involved – from the shop floor to the top floor – has the power to make better and faster decisions to increase productivity. Sensai is a true digital partner for the operations and maintenance team as the manufacturing industry takes the next step in digital transformation.”

By installing a set of non-invasive wireless sensors that interconnect through a smart mesh network of gateways, Sensai collects data through its IIoT Hub, gateways and sensors, and sends it to the cloud or an on-premise location to be processed and secured. Data visualization and collaboration are fostered through user-friendly dashboards, mobile applications and cloud-based connectivity to machinery.

The AI part

Sensai’s differentiator is that it provides a full state of awareness, not only of the current status, but also of the future conditions of the people, assets and processes on the manufacturing floor. Sensai will learn a businesses’ process and systems with coaching from machine operators, process and maintenance engineers. It will then make recommendations based on repeating patterns that were not previously detected. Sensai does this by assessing the team’s experiences and historical data from the knowledge base and cross checking patterns of previous failures against a real-time feed. With this information, Sensai provides recommendations to avoid costly downtime and production shutdowns. Sensai is a true digital peer connecting variables in ways that are not humanly possible to process at the speed required on a today’s modern plant floor.

About the Pilot Program

Participation in Sensai’s pilot program is possible now for interested manufacturers. Already incorporated throughout Metalsa, a leading global manufacturer of automotive structural components, Sensai is set to digitally disrupt the manufacturing industry through AI, including those in automotive, heavy metal and stamping, construction materials, consumer goods and more.

Porfirio Lima, Sensai CEO, answered a number of follow up questions I had. (I hate when I receive press releases with lots of vague benefits and buzz words.)

1. You mention AI, What specifically is meant by AI and how is it used?

Sensai uses many different aspects of Artificial Intelligence. We are specifically focused on machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, data science, and predictive analytics. When used together correctly, these tools serve a specific use case allowing us to generate knowledge from the resulting data. We use NLP to enable human and computer interaction helping us derive meaning from human input. We use ML and deep learning to learn from data and create predictive and statistical models. Finally, we use data science and predictive analytics to extract insights from the unstructured data deriving from multiple sources. All of these tools and techniques allow us to cultivate an environment of meaningful data that is coming from people, sensors, programmable logistics controllers (PLCs) and business systems.

2. “Learn processes through operators”—How do you get the input, how do you log it, how does it feed it back?

Our primary sources of data (inputs) are people, sensors, PLCs, and business systems. In the case of people on the shop floor or operators, we created a very intuitive and easy to use interface that they can use on their cellphones or in the Human Machine Interfaces (HMIs) that are installed in their machines, so they can give us feedback about the root causes of failures and machine stoppages. We acquire this data in real-time and utilize complex machine learning algorithms to generate knowledge that people can use in their day-to-day operations. Currently, we offer web and mobile interfaces so that users can quickly consume this knowledge to make decisions. We then store their decisions in our system and correlate it with the existing data allowing us to optimize their decision-making process through time. The more a set of decisions and conditions repeats, the easier for our system is to determine the expected outcome of a given set of data.

3. Pattern? What patterns? How is it derived? Where did the data come from? How is it displayed to managers/engineers?

We create “digital fingerprints” (patterns) with ALL the data we are collecting. These “patterns” allow us to see how indicators look before a failure occurs, enabling us to then predict when another failure will happen. Data comes from the machine operators, the machines or equipment, our sensors, and other systems that have been integrated to Sensai’s IIOT hub.

We trigger alerts to let managers and engineers know that a specific situation is happening. They are then able to review it in their cellphones as a push notification that takes them to a detailed description of the condition in their web browser where they can review more information in depth.

4. What specifically are you looking for from the pilots?

We are not a cumbersome solution, for us is all about staying true about agility and value creation. We look for pilots that can give us four main outcomes:

– Learn more about our customer needs and how to better serve them

– A clear business case that can deliver ROI in less than 6 months after implementation and can begin demonstrating value in less than 3 months.

– A pilot that is easy to scale up and replicate across the organization so we can take the findings from the pilot and capitalize them in a short period of time.

– A pilot that can help Sensai and its customers create a state of suspended disbelief that technology can truly deliver the value that is intended and that can be quickly deployed across the entire organization.

Misunderstood Robots

Two things I know–First, this is, and always has been, a blog. That means that it’s personal and written by me. On the other hand, I’ll gladly quote anyone relevant. Second, people who work for PR agencies are under great pressure. Evidently they get paid per placement rather than collaboration and effectiveness. Either they or their marketing clients have read about the great Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of “guest posts” on blogs. I am inundated with requests–mostly from people who have no clue what my market is.

This is one such request from an agency I don’t know about a company I don’t know. I seldom write about robots for a variety of reasons. Mostly it’s because there hasn’t been much that is news. But robots are greatly misunderstood especially by writers in mainstream media who have no clue but do have lots of readers. So this request, with a somewhat poorly written intro, contained an “infographic” (something I also dislike) busting some myths. It’s worth a scan. The company is Acieta. Following is the intro.

Flying cars and moon colonies might still be a ways off, but the future is here in a lot of ways. Anyone old enough to remember watching “The Jetsons” can recall a world in which human beings have it easy because robots are doing all the dirty work. We might not be at the point where robots are doing everything we don’t want to do ourselves. Nonetheless, in the manufacturing sector, robots now make up a significant portion of the “manpower” used to make the items we use every day. Modern manufacturing as we know it today wouldn’t be possible without the contributions of robots. However, there’s a lot of information most people don’t know about them. They may be concerned that robots will make human beings in the manufacturing sector obsolete. They may be worried that robots create an unsafe working environment for people. Or, they may even be concerned that one day robots will become smart and independent enough to take over the world.

Knowing some of the basic facts about today’s modern manufacturing robots can do a lot to help alleviate those concerns, however. For instance, even though robots do much of the heavy and dangerous jobs in the modern manufacturing facility that humans used to risk life and limb to do, they still can’t do everything themselves. Human beings still are needed on the production floor for many tasks involved in the manufacturing process, as well as programming and servicing the robots themselves.

There’s also no reason to worry about manufacturing robots deciding they don’t need people anymore. Although advancements in artificial intelligence are being made seemingly every day, the robots found in manufacturing environments by and large are only capable of doing what they are programmed to do. What’s more, today’s robots are so sophisticated that they can recognize when an unsafe condition occurs and stop what they’re doing immediately until people are out of harm’s way.

The following guide dispels some of the most common myths about robots. If you’re concerned about robots’ place in the modern manufacturing landscape, take a look and have your questions answered. The future is here, and it may be better than you think.

 

Infographic created by Acieta
Here Is A Hint Why I Chose Technology Career Over Political Science

Here Is A Hint Why I Chose Technology Career Over Political Science

Is it any wonder about the wisdom of dropping my graduate work in political science while returning to manufacturing and technology?

Try these pieces of obfuscation this week from Washington.

The big tax cut and simplification bill turns out not to simplify anything. Manufacturing organizations sending information to me believe it offers financial rewards to companies who keep workers offshore. Many of us will see little or no tax cut. Do you ever wish like I do that people would mean what they say and say what they mean?

This from FACT. A letter to Congress persons.

On behalf of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT) Coalition, we write to urge you to oppose H.R.1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). This bill would create significant new tax incentives to move U.S. jobs, profits, and operations overseas, while exploding the deficit. The bill’s complicated structure also creates multiple new loopholes to allow for expanded tax avoidance by large, multinational companies at the expense of small businesses and wholly domestic companies.

The FACT Coalition is a non-partisan alliance of more than 100 state, national, and international organizations working toward a fair tax system that addresses the challenges of a global economy and promoting policies to combat the harmful impacts of corrupt financial practices.[1]

The final conference bill would move the country to a territorial tax system. The primary goal of a territorial system is to permit offshore corporate profits to escape U.S. tax. Taxpayers already lose an estimated $100 billion every year to aggressive tax avoidance by multinational companies.[2] These changes would further incentivize corporate profit shifting abroad — leaving regular taxpayers to pick up the tab.[3]

This is an item from Sara Fischer writing in the Axios Media Trends Newsletter.

Why it matters: Multi-billion-dollar deals — along with regulatory changes such as the repeal of net neutrality rules — are often justified as ways to spur innovation and increase consumer choice, but consumer advocates argue the actions could actually make access to some popular content more expensive. The real question: Is choice at the expense of price really giving consumers what they want?

Those of us who have been around the block a few times know a couple of things. 1) Big companies don’t really innovate—they acquire smaller innovative companies to develop their portfolios. 2) Industry consolidation (mergers) occur during a period when innovation runs out of energy and companies are beginning to fail. What we’re waiting for is the new innovation area.

Climate, Environment, Business

As politicians debate political theory—most likely with an eye toward electoral votes—regarding environmental policy, businesses have long ago discovered that a sound environmental policy reduces costs and improves operations. Try this item from Axios Generate’s Ben Geman.

Coal and climate tussle: Mining giant BHP said Tuesday that it plans to abandon the World Coal Association, and may also leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over differences on climate policy, including the Chamber’s opposition to pricing carbon and its attacks on the Paris climate deal. BHP’s newly published review of its membership in trade associations is here. Quick take, via the Financial Times: “The move reflects the growing importance of environmental, social and governance standards within multinationals, which want to protect their brands and insulate themselves from threats posed by activists and consumer boycotts.”

Just for fun.

Here’s one Fun Thing gleaned from the latest Axios newsletter.

Listening to Mozart is said to raise your IQ. Does playing his music make you a better employee? AP’s David McHugh answers from Frankfurt:

  • “Definitely so, say many global companies and their workers, above all in Germany and Asia, where accountants, engineers, sales reps and computer specialists bring violins, cellos, oboes and trombones and gather in their spare time to rehearse and perform lengthy, complex pieces of classical music.”
  • “A conspicuous number of big German corporate names — along with a handful in Japan and Korea — have their own company-linked symphony orchestra.”
  • Why it matters: “The orchestras serve as public relations tools, playing charity concerts and livening up corporate events. … [And] a symphony orchestra is an excellent model for the creative teamwork companies need to compete.”

Well, we have the people from Emerson Automation playing rock and roll at every Exchange these days. Time to pick up that guitar again.

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