Benefits of Industrial Automation

Industrial automation is all the rage right now in different manufacturing sectors.

19:06 03 February 2020

As innovation in the field has grown, it has been adopted by even smaller companies that were previously locked away from it.

With growing acceptance, there are many benefits that these firms have gained. They include:

Increased production levels

One benefit of manufacturing automation that organizations have experienced, is that it boosts production. The injection of automation into an organization sees the organization produce faster and higher output.

Automation, with robots for example, allows companies to be operational continuously. Production does not need to stop just because it's time to go home for the human workers in the organization.

Lower energy usage

With automation, manufacturing companies are able to consume and need less energy for their operations. Take collaborative robots for example. If a company were to acquire several of these robots for a manufacturing process and leave it to them, they will have ushered themselves into Industry 4.0 or as popularly known, they will become a lights out company.

This is characterized by robots working independent of any human supervision. In this factory, the lights will never be switched on as there is no need for human presence in the robot run factory.

This means less power, water is used. There is also less food consumed and thus, overall less energy used.

Reduce labor waste

There are many tasks that are often allocated to human labor in the factory. Many times, these tasks are time consuming and without much impact on the company’s bottom line. To carry out these tasks and the meaningful ones at the same time, companies will most times need to hire extra hands.

Enter robotic automation. This enables companies to take away some of the repetitive, boring and menial tasks from their human labor and assign them to robots. This then allows human labor to focus only the tasks that are meaningful and need to be handled by humans. All the other tasks are left to robots.

Companies that have already implemented this have seen a renewed morale in their staff and better results.

Reduce materials used

Like with labor, automation enables companies to reduce waste during the production process. Waste in terms of materials used. Robots are highly accurate and precise. As a result, you can be sure of the number of final products you will get from a process.

On the other hand, manual production is not as accurate. There will be defective products and wasted material thus leading to losses and poor-quality products for the organization.

Create efficiency in the production process

Automation helps improve the speed of production. Robots work faster and longer than human workers. They are also more accurate. This leads to high quality products and cost savings in the production process.

Help meet customer demand

In this era, it is not enough for organizations to produce mass products. Automation helps companies delve into mass customization. This means that an organization will be producing lots of different products.

With automation in the sales process brought about by the penetration of internet, manufacturers are able to get in touch with customers quickly and easily. This allows customers to give an opinion on their personal style and preference. The manufacturer then assures that individual customer that they can produce according to their needs.

Without automation in the factory, this is next to impossible.

Create more jobs

Automation enables organizations create more jobs. With robots handling some tasks, organizations will be able to hire more people who will interact with their customers and other stakeholders.

Rather than take away jobs as is thought of robots, they will create opportunities to develop new jobs and careers.

Conclusion

Manufacturing automation brings about these and many more benefits to organizations that adopt it. It makes financial sense for companies to invest in automation. It also helps the customers of the final product as they are able to enjoy a high-quality product.