Large-scale manufacturing automation projects are becoming increasingly common across the country as Australia expands it’s own on-shore manufacturing capabilities and this project is one of the largest we’ve had the pleasure of being a part of.
The Customer’s Problem
For large-scale manufacturers, the most common problem experienced across the country is one of having enough skilled labour available to meet the throughput requirements of the manufacturer. Invariably, not only does skilled labour become increasingly difficult to find and secure, but the complexity and nature of certain manufacturing processes can pose a serious safety risk to workers – particularly with manual welding and heavy and cumbersome materials handling.
This customer was looking to expand their manufacturing operations but was unable to secure the skilled labour to accommodate this growth, as well as looking to increase the overall efficiency, safety, and product repeatability of their operations moving forward.
The Diverseco Solution
The increasingly common answer to a manufacturer’s problem of potentially unsustainable scalability is the operationally sustainable answer of introducing robotics automation where it makes sense to do so. The answer isn’t always to “just automate the problem away”, and our dedicated team of robotics experts and engineers are always available to test the feasibility of this kind of automation for our customer’s operations.
With the sheer scale of this manufacturer’s operations and the problems they were currently experiencing, robotics automation was certainly the right answer here.
What was incorporated in this solution after a period of careful design and planning was a total of 4 fully-automated Kawasaki robots:
Each of these robots work in tandem with one another to deliver the fully automated solution for the unloading, welding, and packing of the customer’s manufactured componentry. This multi-robot solution is an industrial solution and operates within a caged-off environment, free from human workers, enabling the highest possible level of safety for the entire manufacturing process itself.
If you’d like to see the solution in action, watch the video below for a showcase!