Nowadays, with the help of automatic control or automation, companies can carry out processes with slight to no human support. Automation commands equipment and finishes processes for a wide range of things and manufacturing surroundings around the world. Automation can improve quality, efficiency, and effectiveness. Moreover, it is frequently all but concealed to the ordinary user. 

The automation process includes a computer controller that matches specific measures to pre-existing ideal values, adjusting the metrics to keep the required product’s values and conditions. Automation in industry powers control systems (like computers) and data to control equipment and operations in manufacturing or other activities.

Automation has obtained a growing adoption through production facilities around the globe. It improves the manufacturing process while at the same time it maintains the complexity of the product within its ideal proportion. Besides, it enables as little change as possible from the predefined proportional values of each product.

Companies may use automation for creating, machining, and forming parts, along with assembling products. Companies now benefit from highly innovative production techniques like rapid manufacturing, which is basically the employment of software automation and connected production equipment used to speed up the production process.

In general, automated production facilities, especially fixed production lines, comprise the workplace and transmission system that take a developing part to finish through a series of tools. The factory automation setup portrays the whole collection of buildings, equipment, utilities, procedures, and products needed to create a particular item or wide range of products.

In this article, we are giving you a complete guide through factory and manufacturing automation. Continue reading to find out more about the nature of both of these groundbreaking processes that have changed the industry approach toward production forever. 

The Significance Of Automation In Manufacturing

Companies use automation in manufacturing to execute repetitive and mundane tasks and processes with almost no human intervention. It relates to placing new products into high volume production while ensuring their parts for the accessible manufacturing process.

It demands creating an integrated modeling environment, whereby part specifications, relations, reliance, and manufacturing processes can be determined using features or equivalent kinds of attributes. 

Nowadays, it includes hardware and software to manage processes via computer programming. Besides, AI, robotics, The Internet of Things, and big data now improve and magnify the potential of manufacturing automation.

Automated manufacturing processes help a company achieve efficiency and productivity while straightening its product’s quality and earnings. Automation manufacturing systems demand little or no human participation to operate. These systems usually carry out the operations of collecting, handling, processing, and inspection of materials from start to finish. 

Factory Automation And Its Applications

The term factory automation characterizes the approaches or systems that utilize extensive electronic and mechanical automation to control processes or tasks that have limited human interference within factory facilities. Factories must work under the restrictions of regulation, security, competition, cost efficiency, and quality. Factory automation eases the challenges of these restrictions by offering many tasks with effective and practical solutions.

The gathered data from strictly controlled tools and equipment provides resources to monitor work while reducing change and errors. There are three kinds of factory automation: programmable, flexible, and fixed. The kind you select relies on the category and amount of items you’re producing. No matter if you’re manufacturing a moderate or large amount of units each month, you can always change products.

Some of the main industries that produce factory-automation output include the:

• Consumer goods

• Energy

• Communication equipment

• Food and beverage

• Robotics

• Automotive

• Packaging

• Semiconductors and electronics

• Pharmaceutical and medical industry.

What Are the Benefits of Manufacturing Automation?

Today, the benefits of manufacturing automation come both in social and economic forms. For instance, with decreased birth rates and an aging population in countries like Japan, automation is the only solution to maintain the current stage of productivity.

Manufacturing’s contribution to the U.S. economic state it’s simply something the country can’t neglect either. According to the NAM, for every $1 spent in manufacturing, another $2.74 are added to the economy. Just for the record, that’s the highest multiplier effect of any economic sector. 

In the United States, where small businesses carry out the most significant manufacturing part, automation is crucial to maintain overall competitiveness and productivity. Furthermore, according to CNBC, automation increases production rates between 30-40%. Automation provides many core benefits to the industries mentioned above, including:

• Automation Is Equal To Higher Productivity. End-to-end factory automation can double or even triple production compared to facilities that use only several automation systems. Besides, fully automated equipment can usually keep running for prolonged periods with a relatively small impact on the maintenance outlook. It allows companies to outdo their competition with much simpler goods.

• Automation Means Lowering The Overall Costs. Through automation, manufacturers can simplify the overall complicated process of manufacturing a product. Factories can continuously update their automation systems until they are as competent as possible: generating less heat loss, using the minimum force, and focusing on controlled and accurate motions. All that makes manufacturing less expensive, which cuts expenses and increases profit.

• Automation Contributes To Safety In Any Workplace. Even the most advanced robotic system is worthless without human insight to direct it. Once a facility deploys automation, employees no longer have to worry about the most hazardous and dirty work. Life-threatening processes are usually the first to be commissioned to robots. That lowers accidents and helps operators sustain their health.

• Automation Provides High-Level Focus. Automation allows facilities to leave the tedious physical work to the machines. That way, workers can focus on how to improve efficiency and extend their product’s possibilities. There’s a valid reason why manufacturing automation is being used all across the globe. It simply benefits everyone. Thanks to automation, every company can bring the same groundbreaking innovation that other businesses can later adopt. Today, we’re in the center of a new automation blast that promises to transform how companies manufacture additionally.

Final Words

Automation is not something that you can do overnight. First, you need to run some check-ups regarding your business and customers before running along with technology implementation. Is there a problem you need to solve? A need you are discharging? Or a competitive edge that the deployment of technology will address? Can you build a cost-benefit analysis around automation as you would any other investment? If not, don’t do it. If you can, create a vision of what you are trying to achieve. Start small and construct from your triumphs.

Ronan Ye is the founder and managing director of 3ERP which is one of China’s leaders in rapid prototyping and 3D printing. Upon completing his college degree at Guangzhou University in International Business with honors, he has been heavily involved in China’s fast-growing rapid prototyping and manufacturing industry. He really has grown up in and with the industry here in China learning about it at a young age. Hence, his knowledge of the overall industry is second to none, and hence why many global companies like BMW, VW, and Lamborghini rely on his technical as well as design expertise.