Autonomous Technologies in Manufacturing
Elevate your operations through the transformative power of autonomous technologies.
CIOs are under increasing pressure to:
- Contribute to top-line initiatives while keeping operational costs in check.
- Promote business agility by using composable technologies.
- Ensure interoperability of emerging technologies with existing, often legacy, technologies.
- Effectively collect and analyze large quantities of data toward insights and decision support.
- Provide a secure environment while working with OT that is continuously increasing in complexity.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
Autonomous technologies are transforming manufacturing – industrial robots will improve your shop floor productivity, enhance your efficiency, and reduce wastage while doing it in a safe, sustainable, and scalable manner.
Impact and Result
The deployment of industrial robots in manufacturing can yield a wide range of impactful results, transforming various aspects of operations, productivity, and overall business success. Some potential results and impacts include:
- Enhanced Productivity: Industrial robots can perform tasks with high precision and consistency, leading to increased production speed and reduced cycle times. This heightened productivity can result in greater output and quicker order fulfillment.
- Improved Quality: Robots execute tasks with minimal variation, resulting in consistent product quality and reduced defects. This leads to improved customer satisfaction, reduced rework, and decreased waste.
- Optimized Resource Utilization: Robots can operate 24/7 without breaks, minimizing idle time and maximizing resource utilization. This efficiency leads to reduced energy consumption, optimized material usage, and improved overall resource management.
- Increased Flexibility: Modern robots are designed for versatility and easy reprogramming. Manufacturers can swiftly adapt to changes in production demands, allowing for rapid product line reconfiguration.
- Human-Robot Collaboration: Collaborative robots (cobots) can work safely alongside human operators, enhancing task efficiency and worker safety. This collaboration can lead to improved ergonomic conditions and reduced human fatigue.
- Data-Driven Decision-Making: Robotic automation generates vast amounts of data that can be analyzed to identify patterns, optimize processes, and make informed decisions for continuous improvement.
- Safety Improvement: Dangerous and hazardous tasks can be assigned to robots, reducing the risk of workplace accidents and injuries for human workers.
- Cost Reduction: While the initial investment in robotics can be substantial, the long-term cost savings from increased efficiency, reduced waste, and lower error rates can be significant.
- Competitive Advantage: Companies that embrace industrial robots can gain a competitive edge by offering higher-quality products, faster turnaround times, and improved customer responsiveness.
- Sustainability: Efficient resource utilization and waste reduction achieved through robotic automation can contribute to improved sustainability efforts, leading to reduced environmental impact.
Autonomous Technologies in Manufacturing and Logistics
Elevate your operations through the transformative power of autonomous technologies.
Analyst Perspective
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Autonomous manufacturing technologies are self-directed, automated, and require minimal human intervention. Machines, robots, and equipment forge interconnected pathways, engaging in real-time data analysis and decision making. This convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced sensors, all instructed by specific, fit-for-purpose software, underpins a new era of possibilities for manufacturers. Solutions such as autonomous mobile robots, guided vehicles, and picking and packing machines are reshaping material flow and the handling of finished goods in production lines, resulting in a highly adaptive supply chain. AI plays a crucial role in orchestrating the monitoring and control of autonomous technologies by ensuring safety, security, and compliance within these systems. Availability of real-time data analysis empowers swift adaptation to customer demands and production shifts, enabling manufacturers to operate with cost effectiveness, efficiency, and razor-sharp precision. In the modern industrial landscape, autonomous technologies have been largely misunderstood or dismissed outright as the playground of large, global organizations with capital to spare for such endeavors. In this research, we aim to explore aspects of this technology in detail and highlight the transformative potential that is now within reach of every manufacturer through innovative as-a-service models. This ecosystem of autonomous hardware, software, and robots promises to reshape your operations through realization of benefits along several dimensions such as efficiency, capability, customization, flexibility, sustainability, and innovative improvements spanning product research, demand forecasting, fulfillment, and dynamic routing. Shreyas Shukla |
Executive Summary
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Your Challenge |
Common Obstacles |
Info-Tech’s Approach |
|---|---|---|
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You are under increasing pressure to: Contribute to top-line initiatives while keeping operational costs in check. Promote business agility by utilizing composable technologies. Ensure interoperability of emerging technologies with existing, often legacy technologies. Effectively collect and analyze large quantities of data toward insights and decision support. Provide a secure environment while working with OT that is continuously increasing in complexity. |
Integration complexity and absence of seamless communication and data exchange between systems. High capital exposure for implementing autonomous technologies, integrating them with existing systems, and training employees to maintain and use them. Rigid processes and business’ resistance to change limiting autonomous technologies’ suitability for use. Ethical concerns about using robots and other technologies that could displace human jobs. Lack of sufficient internal capabilities to maintain, operate, and manage autonomous technologies. |
Info-Tech Research Group recognizes the significant benefits of implementing and using autonomous solutions. To that end, Info-Tech will provide: A comprehensive overview of the transformative potential of autonomous technologies. A tool to help you evaluate your organizational readiness levels for deployment of autonomous technologies. A guide aimed at helping you prepare to begin your journey toward implementing autonomous technology solutions. |
Autonomous technologies are transforming manufacturing. Industrial robots will improve your shop floor productivity, enhance your efficiency, and reduce wastage, while doing it in a safe, sustainable, and scalable manner.
The market for autonomous technologies shows tremendous promise
Demand for autonomous industrial robots is expected to continuously grow. The massive shortage of labor globally is driving investments in installations of industrial robots across the globe. The electronics industry, particularly in China, continues to drive a lot of demand for industrial robots.
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Source: International Federation of Robotics, 2022. |
Key facts & figures China has the largest share of installed industrial robots. Consumer electronics uses the largest number of industrial robots. Handling is the most common application of industrial robots. Traditional autonomous robots are far more common than collaborative ones. The industrial robot market is highly oversupplied. “…we found that about 50% of the respondents indicated that they're already deploying some form of Industrial Autonomy.” - Tom Fiske, Principal Technology Strategist, Yokogawa US Technology Center via Control Global, 2022. |
Autonomous technologies are within reach of manufacturers today
Most manufacturers think of industrial autonomy as futuristic, unattainable technology. However, COVID-19 has forced manufacturers to re-engineer processes and build new systems to keep workers safe and operations intact, and in the process, this has advanced large-scale industrial autonomy.
Core technologies for autonomous operations
Orange - Technologies that saw significant adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic
Source: IndustryWeek, 2020.
“…80% of companies indicated that they expect to achieve fully autonomous operations within the next 10 years.”
- Yokogawa via IndustryWeek, 2020
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Unlock Sample ResearchContributors
- Karthik Bhat, Business Development Executive, Siemens AG
- Pradyot KVN, Executive, Emerging Robotics Solutions Company
- Ajai Vasudevan, Smart Factory Expert, Global Consulting Organization
- Yogesh Prasad, Product Management Executive, Siemens AG
- 1 anonymous contributor