Universal Robots Marks Industry Milestone
Cobots are now the fastest growing segment of industrial automation, expected to jump ten-fold to 34 percent of all industrial robot sales by 2025, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Universal Robots USA, Inc. (UR; Ann Arbor, MI) pioneered the market by selling the first commercially viable cobot in December 2008 and has kept their early front-runner position with a 60 percent global share of the cobot market, selling more cobots than all of their competitors combined.
They recently announced the celebration of this milestone during the IMTS trade show: The recipient of their Golden Edition Cobot, UR’s 25,000th unit sold, will be delivered with joints in a rich golden finish to Kay Manufacturing Company (Calumet City, IL), a small precision machining company outside Chicago. “With this event, we celebrate not just our success in empowering users, but also the successes of our customers in innovating and changing their workplace with collaborative robots,” said Jürgen von Hollen, the president of Universal Robots, emphasizing how they couldn’t have reached this historic landmark without customers like Kay Manufacturing. “The Gold Edition Cobot reflects our continued commitment towards making the unlimited potential of robotics accessible for all.”
Unlike conventional industrial robotic systems that usually stay bolted down in cages dedicated to one task only, these cobots are designed to work hand-in-hand with operators on a wide range of tasks, opening up more opportunities for human-robot collaboration. Kay Manufacturing is using them for end-of-line tasks, packaging and palletizing parts off a conveyor. They started to look into automation after receiving an order that doubled their production output to over a million pieces per year. Their engineering team first considered building a traditional automation cell, but after an internal review they concluded that build time, installation, robot programming, safety hardware requirements, and programming of all safety functional devices would be too costly and take far too long. “A traditional cell would not justify our internal rate of return and would consume most of our facilities’ technical resources,” explained Brian Pelke, the president of Kay Manufacturing. “It was a non-starter.”
Instead, the shop looked into cobots that don’t require the same safety set-up due to a built-in safety system in the robot arms that make them automatically stop once they encounter obstacles in their route. “We quickly realized that these cobots were the most cost-effective option, requiring the least amount of technical resources,” noted Pelke, who estimates that each UR robot helps save $150,000 in annual labor costs. “UR has an impressive user interface that was easy to learn and to cross train all of our personnel. The cobots didn’t replace any employees, we were able to meet increased production demand with our existing work force, and we saved 20 minutes of operator time per hour, all while improving our ergonomic work environment and freeing up our staff to handle more value-added tasks. We look forward to putting our new golden cobot to work and expect our fleet of UR cobots to grow even further as our production expands.”
