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While labour costs have been steadily increasing, the price of installing an industrial robot has plateaued – or even fallen – over the past three or four years, as the (mainly) Japanese manufacturers adopt mass production techniques that enable greater economies of scale.

With the cost of a modern multi-axis industrial robot on a par with a sales rep’s car, there’s never been a better time to invest in robotic equipment – or so says the robotics industry.

But, as any financial director will testify, sales reps’ cars aren’t cheap and any expenditure on that scale has to be backed up by a pretty watertight justification.

One of the biggest obstacles to making an informed decision is the tunnel vision that seems to afflict many UK companies when looking at the case for spending money on robotic packaging equipment.

It’s true that a typical machine operator costs £20,000 per year, and that this cost can probably be recouped within a year by investing in a robot. However, to look at robots purely in terms of labour cost savings is to miss the point.

“The main financial improvement is not a saving at all – it’s a production benefit,” says Nigel Smith, managing director of TM Robotics. “With a robot you can make more product, with less waste, using the same footprint or smaller in your factory. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy equation you can use to illustrate this. If there was, every plant in the country would be packed with robots.”

David Bradford, managing director of RTS Flexible Systems, says the companies reaping the rewards of automation are those with “an entrepreneurial vision of the impact of robots” and that “take a holistic view of their processes”.

“Successful automators ask the question: ‘What else can we achieve with automation?’ They think outside the box, rather than looking at automation as a ‘bolt-on’ or straightforward replacement for labour. Clearly every project needs to have a robust justification for return on investment but more and more we are seeing people experience additional benefits and unexpected returns.”

Long-term benefits
The flexibility of robots versus linear mechanical equipment, which allows companies to move away from the traditional approach of buying dedicated packaging equipment, is a major benefit to those ready to embrace the concept.

“In terms of their ability to be redeployed, robots, particularly Scaras [selective compliant assembly robot arm], have always been versatile,” says Smith. “They are components that can be re-programmed and transferred to a different line very quickly. As a result, they don’t have to be seen as an investment in a one-off project, but rather as a long-term addition to a plant.”

This idea is taken up by Frank van Bentum, sales engineer with cartoning specialist Langenpac, which is represented in the UK by Springvale UK.

“Robotics allow a company to rededicate its capital asset – in this case the robot and often conveyance – to other product configurations,” says van Bentum. “For example, a producer packing chocolate bars in a single-stack configuration can switch to a multiple-stack configuration or even a display carton, effectively moving from consumer packing to display packing. This sort of inter-functional flexibility can be invaluable, particularly if you are in a market where products have short life cycles or if your packaging and delivery change frequently.”

Another advantage of robots, says Langenpac, is that they can be used in conjunction with an in-line buffer system to boost line efficiency by balancing production output.

In this way, if there are stoppages downstream, the upstream machine can continue producing because the robot will feed a buffer conveyor rather than the downstream machine.

Langenpac predicts this idea will be taken one step further in the future, with the robotic controller becoming capable of taking more pre-emptive action, such as being able to anticipate spikes or lulls in the production process and regulate line productivity accordingly.

Robots can also perform ancillary tasks in addition to picking, placing and packing. The use of vision-guided technology, for example, enables quality checks to be carried out.

RTS developed such a system for transferring poppadums into a vacuum-forming machine. The system, which uses a combination of RTS Pixcell vision systems and ABB Flexpicker robots, collects four poppadums in succession from a conveyor and places them into the packaging machine at speeds of 100 picks per minute.

The vacuum end-effector technology allows the brittle poppadums to be transferred without breakage, and proprietary vision software instructs the robot to avoid picking any poppadums that are damaged or overlapping. RTS says the system delivers an ROI in less than two years through reduced labour costs and increased production capacity.

However, despite these additional benefits and payback periods as short as three months, other than in palletising operations, UK companies are far more reluctant to invest in robots than their overseas counterparts.

The food industry alone in Germany has five times as many robots in operation as the entire UK manufacturing industry, according to RTS. And during 2005, Germany invested in 7.5 times more robots that the UK.

“In the UK, we are very aware of the potential of robots in the automotive industry. However, in other industries, including packaging, which is among the sectors with the greatest potential, we lag behind,” says Smith.

IMA UK reckons high initial capital investment costs deter many manufacturers from investing. It also cites shorter investment periods for capital machinery payback as an issue, saying: “UK companies sometimes have very short company plans of one to three years. Companies in Europe and the US often have five- to 10-year company plans, giving longer payback periods for capital machines.”

RTS confirms this and says all too often, UK manufacturers set ROI targets justified on labour replacement over a time span of 18-24 months, which can be very restrictive.

Short-term mindset
This short-term thinking could have something to do with the policies of UK retailers, thinks Tony Dowling, robot sales specialist at Kuka Automation & Robotics.

“UK reticence to adopt robotics is related to the length of contracts with UK multiples. Long-term contracts are not readily available, which discourages long-term investment in robotic installations.”

Maurice Hanley, sales and marketing manager at Fanuc Robotics, agrees, citing recent food industry research that indicates UK manufacturers are reluctant to commit to robots when they are unable to get major retailers to commit to long production runs.

But he says this is probably misguided, as the whole point of a robot is that it can be switched off when you don’t need it, can be re-programmed, and will normally show a healthy ROI within the first year.

Their automotive heritage means that, historically, the design and performance of the robots themselves may have proved a limiting factor in some applications. As one equipment supplier puts it, “they were damned difficult to control”. However, this has been remedied and, according to IMA UK, robots are now easier to programme and extremely user-friendly. Programming and tooling for robots has become simpler and a wider range of robot platforms is available.

It seems, then, that the real barriers to investing in robotics are psychological rather than physical – nothing more than fear of the unknown. It’s not so much a case of justifying their worth as believing in it.

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ROBOTS AT RACHEL’S ORGANIC
Flexibility was one of the main reasons why Welsh yoghurt producer Rachel’s Organic Dairy invested in a Toshiba Machine robot.

The Aberystwyth-based producer had decided to switch from manual case packing to an automated line following a period of rapid growth.

“We were expanding rapidly and could see our labour costs spiralling,” says Tim Pink, projects and compliance manager at Rachel’s Organic. “There is almost no unemployment in Aberystwyth and as a result labour costs are high and there just aren’t enough operatives available at reasonable notice.”

Rachel’s looked at different automated options and concluded that a robot was the best long-term solution. “Similar results could have been achieved with a linear pick and place system but that wouldn’t have provided the flexibility we require,” says Pink. “We sometimes change packaging to stay ahead of trends. If we did this with a inear system we would have to change the automation as well.”

A Toshiba Machine SR-1054 Scara robot was provided by TM Robotics (Europe) and integrated as part of a wider project by Soco System UK.

The robots are used to place multi-packs of yogurt into cases, but the System could just as easily be employed on almost any product in the Rachel’s Organic range.

The robot’s pick-up head is designed to pick up six cardboard sleeves, each containing six pots, and separate them into two sets of three. The Scara then places the sets into two outer cases, which are pre-formed and supplied to the robotic pack point as required.