ROBOTICS: The New Automation Tool

Industrial robots have seen limited use by industries for over a decade but until the auto industry introduced robotics for spot welding applications in the late 60s the robot was not considered seriously. Now they are readily accepted throughout industry. The reasons for their current popularity are the rapidly increasing costs of labor and the seemingly declining productivity of todays workers. In addition, robots today are credited for additional product and quality improvements not seriously considered in the past. Benefits similar to those that have long been attributes associated with hard automation. This paper looks at robotics from a users viewpoint and addresses some of the benefits and concerns attributable to their use. To this end, this paper will describe several applications that are currently used in production with results relative to production gains, side benefits and operator acceptance.