It's the age of the robot. The speed, precision, and power of industrial robotics continues to grow, and manufacturers who don't take advantage of today's robotics are missing out on massive potential for efficiency, profits and growth.

Whether you're a production manager looking to maximize throughput or an engineer working on an improvement project, you're probably noticing tasks and processes on your factory floor that seem like good candidates for automation.

The question is, where do you start? What robots should you be looking at? How can you get them up and running? and most importantly, how can you get your company to sign off on a major new investment?

To answer these questions and more, I called up experts from some of the world’s leading robotics companies. With their help, I've put together a guide which will set you on the path toward your company's first robotic cell.

I also tapped these experts for their best advice for making a winning presentation to get your robotic automation project approved by the people who sign the checks. It’s more than ROI. Hit the button at the top or bottom of this article to get our kit for a successful pitch, including:

expert advice

plenty of useful links to online tools and services

and a starter PowerPoint presentation template

But first, read the 3 sections below: How to Tell if You Need an Industrial Robot, How to Choose the Right Robot, and How to Prepare for Your Industrial Robot Implementation.

Featuring expert advice from:



Dean Elkins Segment Leader, Material Handling Yaskawa Motoman

Dan Hasley Director of Sales Kawasaki Robotics Dick Motley Director, Authorized System Integrator Network FANUC America Corporation

Brian Dillman Area Sales Manager – East Universal Robots

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that the potential of today’s industrial robots to supercharge the productivity of your assets is undeniable. But where exactly should you start?

How to Tell if You Need an Industrial Robot

We’ve all heard the four D’s of robotization (Dull, Dirty, Dangerous, and Dextrous)—attributes of tasks which make them ideal for robotic automation. However, I think there’s more to it than that.

Robots Can Help Solve Labor Shortages

Dean Elkins, Segment Leader of Material Handling at Yaskawa Motoman, pointed to labor issues as a common catalyst for new robot purchases: “Perhaps you've gotten a rather large volume contract, that has lots of consistency in the process. For example, lots of material handling, or lots of arc welding in a batch, and you're compressed from the labor standpoint. You may not have adequate labor to run the job, or your physical location of your factory might be such that your work force is not all that available.”

Dan Hasley, Director of Sales at Kawasaki Robotics, agreed. “If we're talking to a metal fabricator full of welders, they're probably experiencing a shortage of labor because skilled welders are getting fewer and further between. So, they're having trouble keeping up and growing their production because they can't find more people, they can't add capacity. The way out of that conundrum for them is to automate. They have to automate just to grow their business.”

Even if your production doesn’t require skilled workers, staffing can be difficult. For example, if you have a highly variable level of work from week to week, you may not be able to find workers who can manage that much flexibility in their hours. For this problem, the solution could be a staff of workers to cover the typical base level of consistent work, with robots to help handle high-volume busy times.

Measuring Asset Performance and Finding Room for Improvement

Every manufacturer has one thing in common: they all have assets on the factory floor—whether you’re making aluminum chips or potato chips. The question is, are you making the most of your production assets?

This is basic stuff for manufacturing engineers with experience with kaizen or continuous improvement projects. How much productive work is your asset chewing through per hour, per shift, per quarter? This is a KPI for the potential improvement a robot could bring to your process. Here’s an example given by Dick Motley, director of the Authorized System Integrator (ASI) network at Fanuc America. The example is from the baking industry:

“There was a system I'm familiar with that involved taking dough out of the proofing racks, ready to be baked. There was a person transferring trays of dough from rolling racks to a certain type of industrial oven,” Motley described. “You would slide these pans into the available slots in the conveyor that then rose up into the oven, and then went around the top and came back down. By the time the bread made that trip through the oven, it was baked.”

The owner of the bakery, Motley explained, noticed that the loading and unloading process was ergonomically challenging for human workers, involving reaching up high and bending low to reach trays of dough. To address this, the owner automated the oven loading and unloading processes with robots.

When they did, the bakery found an unforeseen benefit to the automation, which had to do with the efficiency of the asset in normal operation:

“What they found out,” said Motley, “was because of the bad ergonomics, the operators had only been filling a small percentage of the available slots in the oven to bake the bread. So, most of the time, that oven was just empty hot air. When they started loading it robotically and getting every slot filled with dough that was ready to be baked, the capacity of that oven went up 80%.”

The bakery also saw further knock-on benefits to the boosted capacity:

“From an energy usage perspective, if the oven's on, you're burning the gas whether you've got bread in there or not. The energy per loaf of bread went down by 50%. The bakery got way more out of the asset and on a per-piece basis, the operating cost for the energy to bake the bread went way down. And you can realize those types of benefits in any industry,” explained Motley.

The takeaway: when you look at arc-on time in welding, spindle utilisation in machining, or even seeing boxes hitting a bottleneck at the end of a packaging line, you’re seeing the opportunity for a robot to dramatically increase the utilization of those assets, kicking your production capabilities into high gear.

Which Process Should Be Automated?

When I asked the experts which tasks make the best early targets for automation, they emphasized aiming for the low-hanging fruit: dull, dirty, dangerous, or highly precise (dextrous) jobs which are mentally easy and repetitive, but physically challenging or harmful.

Brian Dillman, Area Sales Manager with Universal Robots, one of the world’s top suppliers of collaborative robots, had this to say:

“Look around the plant for a job nobody wants to do because it's mindless or there's risk of repetitive motion injuries and it's not a difficult job to do. Simple tasks like that can be automated so that you can then move your people into a more value-added position,” Dillman said.

Motley of FANUC added another good piece of advice. “In the internet age, do you see it on YouTube?” he pointed out.

If you’re curious about a possible application, you may be able to find that someone else, be it a university lab, a robotics supplier, a system integrator or an ordinary manufacturer has already done something similar. For example, here’s a very interesting video showing a FANUC robot tending a mill and a lathe in one workcell. (courtesy of Bastian Solutions)

(courtesy of Owens Design Inc)

And here’s a video showing a computer assembly task using Denso robots:





“I just hear all the time that that's the first stop. A customer seeking whether or not they want to pursue some robotic automation now goes straight to YouTube and says, ‘Hey, what's out there? What's been done successfully, and who has done it successfully?’” said Motley. He continued, “I think an important step is going to be to get in touch with either the robot manufacturers or a system integrator. Here at FANUC, the vast majority of our sales staff are very experienced technical people whose careers started in engineering. They can walk through a plant and say, "Yup, I've seen that done. Nope don't want to go there." That's another key aspect, is to just engage the experts. Ask the experts in addition to the information you can glean on the internet.”

Specialized Process Applications: Welding and Painting

Courtesy of STC Italia

According to the Robotics Industry Association (RIA) Arc welding is one of the fastest-growing application sectors in industrial robotics, largely due to a shortage of skilled workers. The question is, is it easier for a welder to learn to program a robot, or for a robot programmer to learn how to weld? The answer is usually neither, said Hasley of Kawasaki. “A robot programmer who doesn’t know how to arc weld may fail at programming an arc welding robot. You have to have a process expert in order to set up a robot system to perform that process. Painting is exactly the same: you have a robot programmer who knows nothing about painting, or boy, that car at the end of the line is going to look like a Picasso, and not in a good way,” he pointed out. “The best approach is to put together a cohesive team including robot operators and welders, so that your staff can bring together the needed expertise for these specialised applications.”

Hasley wisely advises that management should carefully consider company culture when implementing this type of application. “So, you’ve got to have a merging of the two disciplines, and sometimes organizations are not structured to do this very efficiently. They'll have the welding department who's been welding by hand for years, and all of a sudden there's the automation department and you got a bunch of people with robots who don't know anything about welding, and there becomes a culture clash.”

Robotic Automation Pitfalls and Newbie Mistakes to Avoid

When starting a robotic automation program, many customers tend to make the same common mistakes. According to Motley of FANUC, it’s important to take your time and make sure your company isn’t biting off more than it can chew, so to speak. Is everyone on board for this project?

“I've been in the industry over thirty years, counting my time prior to FANUC,” Motley said. “If there is one consistent, overarching indicator for success, the one word I would use is ownership. No matter what the business, no matter what the industry, no matter what the application, the clearest indicator of success is does the end user really feel they own that piece of automation? That goes for all the stake holders along the way. Does the purchasing person feel like he or she got a good return? Did they get a fair price? Did the maintenance person feel like they got a piece of equipment that they can keep running? Does the operator feel comfortable interacting with it on a day to day basis? So and so forth. All the stake holders along the way have to buy in and say, ‘this was a good decision’. Building that ownership is probably the single biggest thing that I think is a predictor of success.”

Hasley agreed, advising a similarly sober approach. “I think probably the biggest pitfall is having an unrealistic automation strategy. By that I mean, going after very complex processes the first time out. For example, if you've got a highly intricate assembly process that requires a lot of human touch and feel, or very soft edges, and things that are hard to repeat, or hard to even quantify, that would be a challenging one to go after with robotics or even any automation. So, that's a big pitfall that we see customers try,” said Hasley. “I think first time robot users need to need to walk before they run and start by looking at simple processes in their manufacturing environment.”

Hasley also advised that failing to take personnel considerations into account can spell trouble for a robotics program. “Allow time for the proper training, to do proper maintenance over the life cycle of the robot, and also consider safety by either using a collaborative robot or studying the safety standards, so your team knows how to properly protect workers from robots.”

Summary: Do You Need a Robot?

Granted: so far, this article has featured robot salespeople advising you to buy robots. However, the simple arithmetic of the massive efficiency and productivity of robots is undeniable. Take a stopwatch and take a look at the utilization of the machines on your factory floor. Chances are, there’s room for improvement.

When you do decide to get a robot, below are the critical considerations for your selection.

How to Choose the Right Robot for an Application

Image courtesy of FANUC.

The journey of selecting the right industrial robot can start with a phone call to a manufacturer. As Motley pointed out above, sales and support technicians at these companies can provide the consultation expertise to find the right solution for you.

But first, here are some factors to consider.

Will You Need to Hire an Integrator?

The two videos above were made by robotic integrator companies, contractors who specialize in designing and building robotic work cells. While it’s usually possible to buy your robots direct from the manufacturer, investing in an integrator could be a wise decision. It all depends on your level of in-house robotics expertise.

“If you hire people that have a lot of experience with robotic automation, you can definitely give it a shot,” said Hasley. “We have many customers at Kawasaki that are successful at doing their own integration in-house. We sell our robots to them directly.”

However, Hasley also warned that in-house expertise comes at a cost. “You also have to understand whether you're planning on using enough robotic automation to justify having full time in-house staff to design and implement those types of systems. A system integrator is going to be able to come to you with a lot of pre-engineered solutions. Things they've already done for many customers before you showed up, and they can provide you with something that's going to cost you less even though you're outsourcing the system integration. It's going to end up costing less because you don't have to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel.”

Elkins echoed that opinion. Integrators can help prevent the sprawl of costs associated with taking on a new project.

“If you're a business owner that doesn't have a staff on hand that has the aptitude to integrate, then certainly, system integrators are worth their weight in gold,” Elkins said.

“If you have to provide a lot of tooling for a welding application, somebody has to make those tools. And if your company isn't capable of doing so, if you don't have a machine shop that gives you that capability, then you'd have to look outwardly, and an integrator would be the answer for you.”

However, if your team has the mechatronic chops to build a functioning system, then it may be time to take the reins. If the work involves a trade secret or proprietary information, this may also lead your company to self-integrate.

“If you do have the capabilities of providing those types of tools, then why not try doing it yourself? I would just comment that if you're going to do an application yourself, you want to make sure that you're integrating the technology in a robust yet safe way, and follow risk assessment standards,” said Elkins. Your supplier will have resources and expertise to help guide you in the right direction as well.

When to Use a Collaborative Robot

Image Courtesy of Universal Robots

For more information about cobots, check out A History of Collaborative Robots: From Intelligent Lift Assists to Cobots by my colleague Kagan Pittman.

To be blunt, collaborative robots allow you to avoid much of the red tape and guarding associated with industrial robots, at the cost of speed. However, their ease of installation and focus on user-friendliness may make them the right fit for your application.

I asked Brian Dillman of Universal Robots why customers might choose cobots over regular, non-collaborative robot options. “I think a big part of that has to do with how it’s a less complex system to deal with,” He said. “There’s a lot of concern about how technically astute they’ll be and how they can handle automation. Robotics does not have to be as difficult as you think. A lightweight collaborative robot that easy to program and easy to set up is less threatening to a first time user.”

Universal Robots are much lighter than other options. The UR-10, the company’s largest robot, weighs just under 64 lbs., and carries a payload of 22 lbs., or 10 kg. The robot has a reach of 51 in.

“When you can take a robot out of a box by hand, and put four bolts in it, and that's essentially all you need to do to set it up, and it has single-phase 110 power, where you set it up becomes even more flexible,” said Dillman. “A large advantage of [cobots] today is the redeployability of the arms. A lot of our users actually put the robot on a mobile pedestal. People are taking it from one operation to another which is fairly unprecedented from a robot perspective. People are now looking at these products and saying, ‘well wait a minute, where else in the plant can I use it?’ and we encourage that, because it gives that first-time user the flexibility of saying if I have no single operation that has really high utilization, why not look at two or three or more applications and move the robot where I need it?”

Kawasaki’s duAro cobot has similar versatility. The dual-arm SCARA robot comes equipped with computer vision and various sensors to enable a greater degree of application flexibility, and the entire system comes installed on a rolling cart.