Guest Editorial: Advanced technologies provide opportunities to reshore industrial activities

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February 2023: Guest Editorial: Advanced technologies provide opportunities to reshore industrial activities.

One of the main limitations for reshoring is a shortage of workers and labor costs in the United States. One possible solution is the robotization of production. Industrial robots can work 24/7, but there are too few of them on production floors.

According to the American Welding Society, the United States is projected to face a shortage of 400,000 welders by 2024. Right now, 80 percent of welders are over 35 years old, and many young people are reluctant to take on this hard work.

At the same time, the process of robotization is still progressing very slowly. The International Federation of Robotics estimates that the average global manufacturing robot density is 141 robots per 10,000 employees. In other words, only 1.41 percent of factories in the world use robots. Robot density in the United States was 274 units per 10,000 employees in 2021, e.g., 2.74 percent.

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      AI and computer vision make industrial robots more fl exible and adaptive.

DISPELLING MYTHS

Why are there so few robots, despite their necessary applications? The answer lies in technological limitations. Until now, the belief has been that robotization is only used for the mass production of thousands of identical products. Two examples are the automotive industry and electronics. There was a stereotype that robots could not be effective for high-mix, low-volume production because the range of products manufactured is wide and constantly changing.

Two reasons fuel this belief:

1. Every move of a robot must be programmed, and the programming is time consuming and costly. It can take from several hours to several weeks or even months. 2. Real production differs from perfect blueprints. Robots, however, operate with almost zero tolerance for any deviations in a workpiece or its position, which results in their inability to work around irregularities.

BREAKTHROUGH ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGIES

The recent development of computer vision algorithms, technical vision devices and greater computational power generally provides an opportunity to make industrial robots autonomous, flexible and adaptive to different tasks.

In particular, ABAGY overcomes the limitations of traditional robotics. With this software, manufacturers can use robots for custom projects or even one-of-a-kind parts. No robot programming is required. ABAGY automatically generates a robot program to produce a specific product. It takes only minutes. Using machine vision, the system scans the parts and adjusts the robot’s path depending on the actual position and deviations of the product.

The automotive assembly process has been the primary driver of robotization. But other industries have recently become more active in automating production. This means that the number of robots placed in factories will continue to grow.

CASE STUDIES 

ABAGY can cite two case studies about robot implementation. In the first, the manufacturer could not use robots without new technologies. In the second case, the manufacturer already had a robotic cell, but wanted to increase its utilization.

A steel bridge manufacturer produces structures 18 to 20 meters long. From the point of view of traditional robotics, each of these is unique since they are preassembled by hand and often don’t come out perfectly. Also, due to their size, the structures can deform during welding. Previously, all the bridge components were welded by hand, but a smart system with machine vision made it possible to use robots. In this system, two robots can handle the work of 10 welders and produce more than 50 part types per month in a single cell, with threefold reduction in cost and a 500 percent increase in throughput. After trying out the first robotic cell, this manufacturer installed two more cells.

A Sabetha, Kansas, production facility already worked with a robotic cell but it was used for a limited number of parts because the programming was tedious. Aft er implementing a new system with AI and machine vision, the setup time has been reduced dramatically to 10 to 15 minutes for a new part and the robot can now be used for many more products. That’s a serious improvement for a manufacturer with high-mix production. In the first month of the robotic cell’s operation, the company created 50 different technical charts and implemented a tenfold reduction in programming time. Previously, programming a robot for one rotor took between 90 minutes and 2 hours. Now it takes 10 minutes for a welder at this shop to set up tasks for the robot. The company plans further robotization of its production floor.

New technologies and the expanding possibilities of robotics give industrial companies more opportunities to return operations to North America. Many might be eager to implement such advantages.

Dmitry Golitsyn is a co-founder and CTO at ABAGY ( ), a provider of AI and computervision- based software for industrial robots, with locations in Houston and Wheeling, Illinois.