Strategies for Implementing Collaborative Robot Applications for the Operator 4.0

Overview & Synopsis

To accomplish a flexible and highly productive production system, collaborative robot applications, such as co-bots, can be one solution. Hence, last year: 2018, less than 4% of the industrial robot investments had “collaborative roots”. In order to increase this number, clear strategies for the implementation of co-bots are vital. This paper will present the results from the study of 40 SMEs, and six OEMs, regarding where and when to implement co-bots in production. Furthermore, which KPIs to consider when implementing these collaborative robot applications. The Lotus Blossom technique has been used to create the first steps towards strategies for implementing collaborative robot applications for the Operator 4.0. Seven areas of application have been pre-selected, and one area has been left free of choice for the companies. The results show that the areas with greater strategic interest are ‘pick-n’-place’ tasks and ‘load-unload’ tasks.