Feeding of product is key automation area given labour shortfall says system provider

Human labour costs are much higher in the UK than in other countries, according to Omron, but scalable automation with cobots can minimise risks and initial capital equipment costs.

In the UK, the company reports, workforce shortages mean that during 2023, manufacturing overall saw a staggering 74,000 vacancies, while at the same time the country is ranked 24^th in terms of the number of robots utilised per 10,000 manufacturing workers.

UK and Ireland marketing manager Stuart Coulton and technical services manager for robotics, safety and vision George Brown recently debated this mismatch over the course of a webinar. During the webinar, which is still available to view, Coulton argues there are some easy ‘wins’ for many manufacturers with simple applications of automation.

One of these areas is feeding, the majority of which, Brown explains, is still carried out manually. “Moving a product from bulk storage on to a machine can be a mundane, repetitive job,” he points out. “It puts a lot of physical stress on the operator, and makes them vulnerable to repetitive strain and ergonomics injuries,” he says, adding that this makes it a difficult role to recruit for.

Manual feeding also presents operational challenges, Omron maintains. It limits production to working hours, for example, and human error is inevitable, particularly when facilities are understaffed. This can lead to quality issues or unplanned slowdowns and stoppages, all of which can impact the bottom line.

Automated feeding can improve overall operational efficiency in a number of ways, the company claims. Collaborative robots (cobots) working alongside human workers, can be easily programmed to move between processes, increasing cycle time and boosting throughput. Cobots can also incorporate vision sensors for navigation.

Unlike some prohibitively expensive traditional forms of robotics, Omron argues, modern cobots do not require rails, major factory refurbishments or detailed programming skills.

“The key thing is not to jump in at the deep end,” says Brown. “Think about what the most possible, feasible applications might be and go from there.”

Organisations can scale up their automation programmes as and when they achieve return on investment, he adds. “It introduces scalability. It might be that you have three operators doing feeding in one area, so perhaps you start off with one cobot and two staff. You make sure the technology fits and operates, then maybe the second robot comes in, and you can deploy your operators elsewhere.”

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