The Automation Road Map | The Robot Industry Podcast
“When adding automation there’s a temptation to prioritize the most challenging things in your plant and that’s not the right way to go about it.” Ben Whitney, president of Armo Tool and Abuma Manufacturing based in London, Ontario.
Automation can provide a competitive advantage against lower-cost jurisdictions and help solve skilled labour shortages. However, many manufacturing operations have been slow to adopt automation solutions. The Canadian market has an extra challenge because most companies tend to be smaller than in the United States and can be high-mix, low-volume operations which makes automation more challenging. Ben Whitney, president of Armo Tool and Abuma Manufacturing based in London, Ontario recently shared his insights about automation and creating an automation roadmap on the Robot Industry Podcast, hosted by Jim Beretta.
Before making any decisions regarding an automation purchase, it’s important to have a clear plan in place. The automation roadmap establishes goals and priorities, identifying areas that can provide efficient ROI as well as giving employees potential new opportunities for career development.
Some of the factors to consider when establishing the automation roadmap are increased throughput, less labour (or assisting with labour shortages), improved quality, and making more effective use of plant space to allow for additional customer projects. An automation roadmap allows you to plan strategically for future growth.
Other questions to consider:
- How much experience do you and your employees have with automation? If this is your first foray into adding automation to your operation, there are additional concerns, such as obtaining/training/hiring the technical expertise you will need to program, operate, troubleshoot and repair/maintain the robot, what kinds of spare parts you will need to keep on hand, and who is going to reset the robot if the power flickers on the second shift on a long weekend?
- Have you included all the key sources of information in the development of the roadmap? This includes finance and the C-suites, product development, quality control, health and safety, logistics and supply, maintenance, manufacturing, human resources and sales. Never underestimate the wealth of experience from your employees on the plant floor; they can provide valuable insights and can go a long way to easing concerns about “robots taking my job”.
- What tasks currently have the highest employee turnover? What jobs carry high health and safety risks? Could they be automated? Could the tedious tasks provide opportunities for career advancement by training existing employees in the new technology?
While it may seem counterintuitive to include an automation integrator in discussions before the roadmap is prepared, integrators have insights that can target automation decisions, especially if your organization is looking at automation for the first time. Why?
- Integrators understand the costs and benefits of different automation solutions. If you are commissioning a machine to do five functions, but more may be added in the future, it is easier and more cost-effective to integrate“idle stations” for future functions into the original design than to retrofit an existing machine down the road.
- Integrators have the knowledge to suggest automation solutions that can accomplish ROI and operational efficiencies for every budget. Integrators have the expertise to know which operations are challenges to automate, which operations provide immediate benefits and how to plan for future automation growth.
- Integrators can identify how to streamline upstream and downstream functions tied to the automation that could/should be added to the roadmap.
- Integrators keep track of industry trends and can advise how they will impact your operation in the future. They are also aware of evolving automation technology such as vision systems, digital twins and virtual reality and how they could be incorporated to add value.
- Integrators can help companies new to automation to avoid ending up with a solution that is too complex for them. Instead of starting with the most problematic operation in the plant, it is more effective to target processes that are under control to prioritize early wins, gain expertise and add automation when it makes sense.
An automation roadmap can provide the pros and cons of various solutions. If you have seven machines each performing a single part of an operation, they will take more floor space, and require more material handling. It may make sense to have a mega-machine that performs seven operations inside one machine resulting in less space, materials, and resulting in leaner manufacturing. However, the mega-machine is going to be more complex, and harder to access for maintenance or repairs, and if it needs repairs, all the functions it performs will be idle. If the plant happens to be in a location where skilled labour is a challenge, the machine could be down for a long time. If one of the seven individual machines goes down, in contrast, the other six machines can continue to function, and it could be easier to find a workaround for the one machine out of commission. “Having a Roadmap allows you to ensure you are spending money on the right things from dollar 1,” said Whitney.
“Automation should be about taking away the projects or the jobs that people don’t want to do because they’re boring and repetitive and should be creating new roles. You need to have right on the roadmap where those people are going to and that helps to build excitement. If we can figure out how to put this widget into the box and close the box, then your employees won’t have to tape boxes closed for the rest of their lives.”
Here are some elements to consider when creating an automation roadmap:
- What are your current SKUs, how may they change in the future and what would that look like for your operation? If some become obsolete, what will replace them?
- How much experience does your operation have with automation, and what additional resources will you need to implement the automation roadmap?
- Have you included not only the top-level decision-makers, but also employees who have shop floor knowledge and expertise? Are you including an automation integrator to tap their expertise early in the process?
- What information do you need about how the operation is performing, what quality control measures are in place, what type of data would be beneficial in real-time, what information do you want about how the machinery is running? What information does the shop floor, the supervisor, quality control, materials handling and logistics need?
- What are the strategic objectives and how would automation benefit, support or improve them?
- What are current or anticipated supply chain issues?
- What is the value stream if certain processes could be automated?
- What are trends or changes in the industry or global market that could have an impact on the operation and how would automation play a role in mitigating or minimizing future impact?
An automation roadmap can provide your company with a way to strategically plan automation investment while ensuring you are making decisions that give you the best ROI while meeting your strategic short, medium and long-term goals. Some operations, especially if they involve parts that are inconsistent, odd-shaped or made of malleable materials, may not be worth the investment to automate and are better handled manually by humans.
An automation roadmap and a request for a quote (RFQ) or specification document are not the same thing. A roadmap is a more holistic document that can pull expertise from a wider cross-section of sources to establish short, medium, and long-term goals that could be achieved by adding automation solutions. The automation roadmap should be part of annual strategic planning.
In contrast, An RFQ focuses on one machine or one implementation only, and integrators proposals tend to stay within this scope.” The specification document is project-specific, while the roadmap is more future-facing and holistic.
Once created, the roadmap should be reviewed as part of your annual review of operations. As the last few years have demonstrated, unanticipated global events can have a long-term ripple effect and can force changes in strategic direction. An automation roadmap provides a sense of direction to assist with those changes and working with an automation integrator from the beginning can ensure the best results.
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