Robotics and medical device manufacturers: What’s the future?
The factory of the future is a term that has been discussed for a number of years but what exactly does it mean? Reece Armstrong explains.
One of the biggest technologies currently used in industrial manufacturing is robotics. With a market value estimated to reach $40 billion by 2020, industrial robots are being used to ensure consistent quality production and to meet market demands.
In the US, companies are using robots to automate production to help them compete better in overseas markets[1]. Within the global manufacturing market, the US is fourth largest supplier of robots. Interestingly some companies in the US are using robots to manufacture products at home, rather than overseas, helping to retain local employment[2].
More so, with rising labor costs[3] across the US, robotics offer manufacturers a way to save on production costs by reducing human errors and workers’ idle time. In fact, a report from McKinsey&Company[4] shows that since 1990, labor costs have increased by more than 100% while prices for robotics have fallen by over half.
Within the medical manufacturing industry robotics are being used across the entire production line, from assembly to inspection and packaging. Due to the strict regulations that try to ensure devices’ safety, manufacturers are under a lot of pressure to reproduce the same product, under the same stringent conditions time and time again.
Indeed, the introduction of robotics within medical device manufacturing are helping to “solve a variety of production challenges,” according to Wes Garrett, authorized system integrator account manager at Fanuc America. Garret states the popularity of robotics for medical device manufactures is due to the technology’s ability to solve production challenges, including, serialization, traceability, and a need to improve product quality and increase productivity.
Industrial robots offer manufacturers the consistency needed to reproduce devices time and time again. Robots can be programmed to produce identical products to precise specifications without mistakes.
More so, robots offer manufacturers a way to efficiently produce multiple products on the same line with little downtime. Automation technology supplier Acieta states that [5] ‘a robot can change to different product or pack formats in just seconds’. This is a stark contrast to hard automation, where production lines need to be stopped in order to change programmes and tooling reconfigured for the next product type.
Reducing downtime is something which manufacturers strive for to achieve more efficient workflows, which ultimately affect profit. Robotics and automation manufacturer Fanuc responded with the development of its Zero Downtime Application, designed to help prevent unexpected downtime using predictive analytics.
The system works by continuously collecting and analysing data to help manufacturers track the health and maintenance performance of their robots during production, helping to avoid any unexpected downtime.
More so, the system analyses robot data to identify required maintenance tasks based on the usage of specific robots. Manufacturers can use this information to optimise their overall maintenance costs and schedule their robots accordingly. The system is an example of how manufacturers are moving closer to Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things to achieve more productivity and efficient production lines.
To keep up with the pace of innovation, medical manufacturers must be able to change manufacturing lines when new products are needing to be developed. Robotics and automation are able to help manufacturers by offering modular systems that promote efficiency and workflow.
For example, motion control systems are able to help production lines assemble and move medical devices in a flexible workspace. More so, things such as force-control sensing and vision-guided systems can help manufacturers not only pick-and-place devices, but also ensure product safety by scanning and verifying barcodes[6].
One company that has benefitted from using robotics is medical device maker Tegra Medical. The company was facing reduced profits from a mixture of increased development costs and customer-demanded price cuts. Tegra turned to Universal Robots to keep up with customer demands and to reduce costs. By using three devices from Universal Robots, Tegra was able to double throughput and free up 11 full time positions to tend to other processes.
Hal Blenkhorn, Tegra Medical’s director of Engineering, said: “Being in the medical industry, we can’t change our process without notifying our customers and going through validation activity. But by simply replacing the operator with the robot, we just changed the handling of components in-between the processes. That was a huge win for us. With the UR robots, we only get a few rejects per day. Before, that number was significantly higher.”
Another company who has benefitted from working with Universal Robots is contract manufacturer organisation Dynamic Group. An injection molder for the medical industry, employees at the company were finding it difficult to keep up with the labor-intensive process required when tending to an injection molding machining cycle. As a result, parts were becoming ruined due to the heat sensitive products that were being moulded.
To change this, Dynamic Group installed three collaborative robotic arms that took over a number of repetitive tasks, resulting in improved product consistency and an increase of 400% production capacity.
Dynamic Group CEO Joe McGillivray, commented on the use of robotics, saying: “Universal Robots’ UR10 robot arm, gave us a perfectly consistent cycle; we went from having three operators on a single shift to being able to run three shifts per day with just one operator per shift. So we essentially quadrupled our production capacity and our scrap went from significantly high to near zero. It’s been an extremely successful application for us,” says McGillivray.
“Now we’re able to run it with as little as two people. Having this type of success out of the gate as first-time rookies at this stuff has been phenomenal and totally unexpected. Our return on investment was less than two months, and we can even go further because we’re able to adapt the robots to other products so quickly,” says the CEO.
In the future, it looks like robotics are going to be needed more and more if manufacturers are going to be able to produce the kinds of sophisticated medical devices we’re seeing.
Chris Blanchette, executive director Global Accounts Fanuc America, is optimistic about the expected uptake in robotics by manufacturers.
“As medical devices become more sophisticated and production demands increase, robotics help to maximize throughput while maintaining quality. Small, sophisticated devices with precision assembly requirements can be difficult to assemble. Robotics offer a cost-effective solution for precision assembly, and when equipped with vision and other intelligence-based tools, they offer the flexibility to adapt to virtually any assembly process,” Blanchette said.
[1] https://ifr.org/downloads/press/Executive_Summary_WR_2017_Industrial_Robots.pdf
[2] https://ifr.org/downloads/press/Executive_Summary_WR_2017_Industrial_Robots.pdf
[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-costs/u-s-labor-costs-increase-solidly-in-the-fourth-quarter-idUSKBN1FK1XR
[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/automation-robotics-and-the-factory-of-the-future
[5] https://www.acieta.com/why-robotic-automation/robotic-solutions-industry/medical/
[6] https://www.robots.com/articles/medical-manufacturing-automation