A typical industry employs 60% of its labor for material handling. This might be for loading, unloading of stations, transferring parts between processes, storage & retrieval of parts, or logistic functions (receiving, packing & shipping). This not only requires manpower costs and subjects the workers to fatigue, injury and risks, but also makes the throughput dependent on human limitations. Most handling applications can be automated, resulting in faster, safer and efficient operations.
Industrial robots can easily automate picking a part up and placing it into a new location. Pick and place robots not only speed up the process, which increases production rates, but they are also more accurate and do not fatigue. Most of the movements performed by these robots are back-breaking for humans.
The consistent output of a robotic system along with quality and repeatability are unmatched. Pick and place robots can be reprogrammed and tooling can be interchanged to provide for multiple applications.
There are long term savings associated with pick and place robots. An increase in output with a material handling robotic system has saved factories money and time.
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