Industrial Automation: A Necessity for Today’s Manufacturing Industries
Industrial automation, contrary to what many people believe, is not the same thing as mechanization. While mechanization is just the use of machinery operated by humans, automation is the integrated use of mechanical and computer devices in order to create independent processes and systems that need little or no human interference. In other words, as Gupta and Arora claim in their book “Industrial Automation and Robotics”, “mechanization saves the use of human muscles; automation saves the use of human judgment”. As also cited by Gupta and Arora, some examples of industrial automation are automatic machines tools to process parts, automatic assembly machines, industrial robots, automatic material handling, automated storage and retrieval systems, automatic inspection systems, feedback control systems, computer systems for automatically transforming designs into parts and computer systems for planning and decision making to support manufacturing, in which industrial robots may be the most noticeable example (Gupta and Arora, p.2). With this in mind, the huge competitiveness in the current market situation makes high quality, time efficiency, high level of productivity and low production costs vital to any industry. Only by using industrial automation such demands can be achieved; machines can execute tasks that are beyond the human capabilities.
First of all, the use of automation in industries came from the necessity of generating more profit by increasing productivity and decreasing production costs. Automated systems are designed to work faster than manual operators, producing more in the same period of time, which leads to a significant change in the final price of the product. Moreover, a single machine can execute multiple functions reducing the needs for human labor, which results in huge savings with benefits and wages. Industrial automation can also help reducing material waste and using energy and manpower more efficiently. To illustrate, as Manufacturers’ Monthly reports, an Australian manufacturer for cooking products was facing difficulties to deal with the competition against imports from low cost countries and to reach target cycle times at Electrolux plant. Thus, to overcome these problems, the solution came by installing an automated system to join metal trim and plastic columns to a glass panel forming oven doors. This automated system is composed by seven industrial robots working together in one cell. As a result, Electrolux achieved an incredible cycle time of only 14 seconds, which enabled the company to decrease production costs and to increase productivity. "We are now in a much better position to compete with imports from low cost countries, which has been a significant issue due largely to the high Australian dollar," said Chris Henkens, senior manufacturing engineer at Electrolux (as cited in Manufacturers’ Monthly, 2013).
In addition to increase productivity and decrease costs, industrial automation also increases quality control and safety in the workplace and allows more flexibility to the manufacturing process. First, automated systems are more precise than manual labor, they lessen human errors associated with fatigue, stress and distraction, which results in a final product with higher uniformity and quality. For example, according to Gupta and Arora, when automobile and truck pistons are installed manually, the error is around 1 to 1.5% against 0.00001% when it is installed by using automation (Gupta and Arora, p.6). Second, machines can be placed in hazardous conditions that humans would not handle such as doing repetitive functions or working in dangerous environments. Moreover, machines can also do tasks that are beyond the human capabilities; for instance, dealing with heavy loads, very hot or very cold substances, and working extremely fast. Finally, when different tasks are needed in a certain production line, the