As producers face growing stress to enhance productiveness, high quality, and resilience whereas managing rising product complexity, automation is turning into a central a part of fashionable manufacturing facility operations.
Applied sciences comparable to collaborative robots, autonomous cellular robots (AMRs), and rising types of bodily AI are transferring past pilot initiatives and into large-scale manufacturing environments.
One firm on the forefront of this development is Flex, one of many worldâs largest contract producers, which serves clients throughout industries together with automotive, healthcare, industrial tools, communications, and client electronics.
The corporate not too long ago introduced an growth of its long-standing partnership with Teradyne Robotics, underneath which Flex will each deploy robotics options inside its personal amenities and manufacture key robotics elements for Teradyne clients worldwide.
The settlement displays a broader shift happening throughout manufacturing as corporations search to scale automation applied sciences that may enhance operational flexibility whereas serving to deal with labor shortages, provide chain uncertainty, and growing calls for for effectivity.
On this Q&A, Rodrigo DallOglio, president of operational excellence and transformation at Flex, discusses what the corporate has discovered from deploying automation throughout its personal international operations and why transferring from pilot initiatives to large-scale implementation stays one of many businessâs greatest challenges.
DallOglio additionally explains how collaborative robots and AMRs are serving to producers steadiness flexibility with standardization, and presents his perspective on the rising function of bodily AI in manufacturing facility environments.
Whereas absolutely autonomous factories stay a ways away, he argues that AI-enabled robotics is already delivering sensible advantages by making manufacturing operations extra adaptable, scalable, and resilient.
The dialog gives perception into how one of many worldâs largest manufacturing organizations views the way forward for industrial automation and the applied sciences which might be prone to form the subsequent technology of manufacturing methods.
Interview with Rodrigo DallOglio
Robotics & Automation Information: Flex operates at a world scale throughout a number of industries. How does deploying robotics internally â whereas additionally manufacturing elements for companions like Teradyne Robotics â change the best way you concentrate on scaling automation in contrast with conventional manufacturing facility upgrades?
Rodrigo DallOglio: Flexâs place as each a producer and consumer of superior robotics provides us firsthand perception into how automation scales successfully.
It begins with validating workflows and optimizing processes inside a single setting, then replicating confirmed approaches throughout extra websites and operations.
That steady suggestions loop helps Flex scale automation to enhance productiveness, high quality, flexibility, and operational resilience throughout more and more advanced manufacturing environments.
R&AN: Contract manufacturing is extremely aggressive. To what extent is automation now a necessity reasonably than a differentiator for corporations like Flex to stay aggressive on price, high quality, and pace?
RD: Automation is a key driver of efficiency, high quality, and responsiveness in contract manufacturing. As merchandise develop extra advanced and demand shifts quickly, producers want options that enhance precision, speed up manufacturing timelines, and allow quicker responses to operational modifications.
For Flex, the main target is much less on aggressive positioning and extra on utilizing automation to strengthen execution, scale confirmed options throughout amenities, and construct extra resilient international operations.
R&AN: Many producers wrestle to maneuver from pilot automation initiatives to full-scale deployment. What have you ever discovered in Flexâs personal manufacturing facility environments about what works â and what doesnât â when scaling robotics throughout international manufacturing networks?
RD: One of many greatest classes is {that a} profitable automation answer should clear up an actual operational want and be designed with scale in thoughts from the start.
Pilots can reveal technical feasibility, however scaling requires standardized options, robust integration with operations, and clear suggestions from groups utilizing the expertise.
Profitable deployments sometimes begin with a centered, high-impact use case inside a single facility, the place groups can measure efficiency, refine the expertise utilizing reside operational knowledge, and set up a repeatable mannequin earlier than increasing to extra amenities and manufacturing traces.
In the end, scaling automation is an interactive course of that rewards cautious planning and real-world validation.
R&AN: Contract producers should deal with excessive product variation and frequent design modifications. How do collaborative robots and AMRs assist steadiness the necessity for flexibility with the effectivity of standardized manufacturing processes?
RD: Collaborative robots (cobots) and AMRs (autonomous cellular robots) are particularly helpful as a result of they keep away from locking producers into inflexible manufacturing fashions, in comparison with extra conventional materials dealing with options.
Cobots can deal with repeatable duties comparable to meeting and dealing with, whereas AMRs streamline materials motion and cut back handbook transport throughout amenities.
Collectively, they improve effectivity whereas preserving the pliability wanted to handle product variation, shifting demand, and frequent design modifications.
R&AN: The announcement references rising âbodily AIâ capabilities. In sensible phrases, what does that imply on a manufacturing facility flooring immediately â and the way far are we from methods that may adapt in actual time to altering manufacturing situations with out human intervention?
RD: Bodily AI refers to synthetic intelligence methods that function in and work together straight with the bodily world, transferring past digital-only AI (like chatbots) and making use of AI intelligence in robots, autos, and sensors.
These methods understand their environment by means of cameras, lidar, and microphones, and purpose in actual time to carry out duties comparable to navigation, manipulation, and autonomous decision-making.
Whereas absolutely autonomous methods that may adapt to each situation with out human intervention are nonetheless evolving, the near-term alternative could be very actual: utilizing AI-enabled robotics to make manufacturing facility operations extra versatile, environment friendly, and simpler to scale.
