Manufacturing Assembly Should Move Toward Assembly Automation
The core of product manufacturing is the product assembly process
. The only way that finished products are made available is through the process that takes parts and groups of parts, called sub-assemblies, and puts them together to create a finished product. In the past the process of assembly was done manually. Each part of the finished products had to be meticulously screwed, glued, fastened, or snapped into place to create the product. These manual tasks were rife with problems, both the methods that were used and the people that were doing them. Mistakes were made, products had to be re-worked, people were inaccurate in the way they did their jobs. There had to be a better way to do this assembly!Assembly automation is the answer. The actual automation of any assembly process in manufacturing is much more complicated than automated other manufacturing processes like, welding or drilling. Those types of tasks are simplistic in relation to the tasks that need to be automated in the assembly process. A drilling operation that is to be automated would have instruction for a drill bit to turn at a certain speed and move down at a certain speed until it drilled a hole of a predetermined depth in the surface of some object. Then the drill would be removed to repeat the process again. But with the assembly process that needs to be automated, typically there are a number of tasks that need to be done for successful completion of the assembly process. These tasks could include, but are not limited to:
acceptance or rejection of parts,
fastening,
labeling,
inspection,
packaging, and
final preparation.
These tasks could be in any order in the assembly automation process depending on the requirements of the product that is being assembled.
As time has passed technology has made automation more available to manufacturing because of the flexibility and intelligence that automation has brought to processes. Flexibility that assembly automation gives to manufacturing involves the easy adaptability of automation devices in the manufacturing processes. Automation components can more easily be set up to run new and different products on the same production line. This flexibility is usually in response to the demands of customers in the marketplace, so response needs to be quick to meet the demands while they are still demands.
Manufacturing assembly has many good reasons to move toward assembly automation. The manual assembly operation in manufacturing is inherently high cost because of the high cost of labor. This high cost makes it very difficult for a manufacturer to compete with other companies, especially if the competing products can come to market at lower prices levels due to lower cost automated manufacturing. Consistent uniformity is another excellent reason for assembly automation. Products have a much greater chance of being uniform when they are put together by automation in the manufacturing process. Manual assembly will have a certain number of inconsistencies, no matter how well trained and conscientious employees are about the assembly process, they will make mistakes.
Automation of assembly has far greater capabilities than humans doing the assembly in manufacturing. Machines apply labels, screw parts together, inspect parts, and snap together parts with much more dexterity than humans. The enhanced capabilities of machines are consistent at a very high level of uniformity. These skills do not mention the increase in productivity that is gained in the assembly process by using automation. The higher productivity level will allow in-process inventories to be lowered, which should reduce the investment in the inventory on-hand. Increased responsiveness to the demands of the marketplace is a result of automating the assembly process. Because of the enhanced capabilities of the devices on the production line, they can be turned over to produce different products with agility. The manufacturer answers the demands of the market and remains competitive with products that customers want in the near term.
Long term consistency in quality is one of the greatest reasons for the automation of the manufacturing assembly process. Fitting quite tightly with dexterity and speed in assembly, the long term high quality of products is one of the best vehicles to keep customers buying the products that are produced by automated manufacturing over the long term.
The reasons for applying automation to the manufacturing assembly process are just as true with other parts of the manufacturing operation. As technology makes makes automation more capable, there will be more use of automation in all the manufacturing processes for the reasons listed here.
by: John Mitchell