Five ways collaborative robots are unleashing operational productivity for automotive manufacturers

Evolving market and customer demands mean that the vehicle of the future is changing. Automakers are adapting to the need for more diverse offerings and leaner production workflows. In addition, the EV market is set to expand by 16% while YoY growth for Hybrid vehicles is predicted to grow as much as 23% in 2025, adding production complexity.

This means that OEMs and car manufacturers must increasingly deal with reduced product life cycles and a vast, unprecedented increase in data volumes.

And they must become more digitally enabled to drive agility and unlock greater productivity aligned to increased speed.

All while growing at scale and accelerating innovation everywhere. To do this, they require increased control and visibility into performance at every level of production.

Five key ways cobots are unleashing operational productivity

To solve these challenges, OEMs and auto manufacturers are choosing collaborative robots to gain complete transparency across all operational data, use cases and reusable programs.

Cobots are enhancing productivity in critical ways to drive performance and unlock value across every area of manufacturing production. Here’s how:

#1: Cobots are driving increased productivity and operational speed

By empowering engineers through intelligent collaboration, cobots are maximizing human cognitive skills while accelerating productivity through automation.

They support superior higher levels of accuracy and can undertake tedious, manually intensive tasks to free up resources and improve productivity in component handling by 30%.

#2: Collaborative robots handle dangerous tasks

Collaborative robots can do highly physically demanding and unsafe jobs to protect human workers from risk and injury. They help make the production floor safer while freeing up skilled workers to focus on higher-value tasks.

#3: Cobots drive increased agility, command and control of operations

The automotive market faces huge volatility and uncertainty as we shift toward a more data-driven, tech-enabled future powered by 4IR capabilities. Deploying collaborative robots allows manufacturers to collect and analyze huge volumes of data, reducing downtime and supporting informed production decisions. They can be deployed quickly and reprogrammed, customized and reprogrammed easily to deliver to evolving market and customer demands. Their increased flexibility means reduced production cycles and faster time to market.

#4: Collaborative robots support consistent quality

Cobots drive repeatable and reliable outcomes with precision. They improve the accuracy of even complex tasks like visual inspection by up to 90%. This reduces the need for costly rework and recalls, eliminates potentially expensive errors and significantly minimizes compliance risks.

#5: Cobots supercharge collaboration to drive innovation

Data from collaborative robots can help identify innovative use cases, areas for production optimization and fresh approaches to existing challenges. Engineers can design seamless new workflows and factory floor workers can work faster, with greater accuracy, safety and assurance.

It is little wonder OEMs are turning to a platform approach for robotic collaboration

Universal Robots brings a platform for robotic collaboration, enabling the seamless integration of collaborative robots within any existing workflows, systems or complex production line functions.

Industry-leading PolyScope 5 and Polyscope X software allows businesses to customize collective functions to drive rapid templatization while the UR Connect system enables leaders to monitor cobot performance from anywhere in the world.

The result? Enhanced productivity, minimized downtime, and more efficient cobot fleet management to support accelerated ROI.

Through a robust partner ecosystem, businesses gain access to hundreds of end-effectors, application kits, and custom or semi-custom solutions. UR Academy offers free introductory e-learning and in-person or simulator-based advanced training, equipping engineers and operators with the skills to program and use cobots.UR Care supports predictive maintenance capabilities so businesses can identify and remediate potential wear and tear before it impacts operations. This means little to no downtime, reduced disruption and maximum production output. Universal Robots’ e-series line has an overall Meantime Between Failure (MTBF) of over 85,000 hours.

Collaborative robots offer exceptional flexibility, designed to adapt and evolve with your production needs, keeping you ahead in a rapidly changing market.

This makes Universal Robots’ platform for robotic collaboration the perfect fit for businesses looking to accelerate performance and accuracy across high-precision use cases like assembly, quality inspection, 3D inspection, line tracking, and screw driving.

Individual cobots or entire fleets can be deployed rapidly, integrating into production lines with minimal layout changes and workflow disruptions. This means businesses can deploy advanced new capabilities quickly to realize ROI in months, not years.