Robots that are reused, not replaced

Picture three lines with seasonal volumes. One is utilised 32 % of the time, one 24 % and one 26 %. Most of the week, each of them waits.

Now let one mobile robot be shared between the three lines. In this example from our food and beverage material, utilisation goes up to 82 %.

Why most robots wait

A traditional robot cell is built for one purpose, at one place. That is a sound way to automate a product that runs for years. When volumes vary with the season, or the product mix changes, the robot stays where it was installed and the hours it is not needed are simply lost.

In our comparison over 48 months with ten products, traditional solutions averaged 59 % robot utilisation, against 81 % for flexible solutions.

What makes reuse possible

The OpiFlex platform is standardised and built in our factory. The flexibility sits in the patented software and the grippers. That is what lets the same robot take on a new task without being rebuilt.

The cell is moved with a pallet truck, manually or by AGV, and docks at a station with high precision. With the Dynamic Program Generator, an operator creates a program for a new product in 1–3 minutes, against 10–60 hours traditionally. In Robot Pools, robots are shared between lines, shifts and machines, and moved to where the work is. When a product is phased out, the robot moves on to the next job.

What it means beyond the balance sheet

More hours per robot, and a robot that is reused when the mix changes instead of being replaced. That is the part of sustainability we can point to with numbers.

It also changes the work for the people around it. Robots take over heavy, repetitive handling. Operators get a more stimulating task: they are the ones who add new products to the robot.

The talk above is from Advanced Engineering 2022, where Scania and OpiFlex presented robots as a shared resource.

Start with your utilisation

If you have several lines or machines where robots, or people, wait for work part of the week, I would like to hear how it looks today. A rough picture of your volumes over the year is enough to start. Contact us.