French-founded automation giant, Schneider Electric, has partnered with Universal Robots to automate its manual and repetitive processes with UR5 cobots, freeing up staff’s time and enabling them to instead focus more on value-adding tasks.
Schneider’s plant in Bulgaria predominantly focused on the production and assembly of mini circuit breakers, deployed two UR5 cobots to automate repetitive manual labour tasks, such as picking and placing power breakers and boxes.
The automation giant delivers solutions to homes, buildings, data centres, infrastructure and industries, by compbining energy technologies, real-time automation, software and services.
The plant employs more than 500 employees comprising of operators, administration and support staff.
“The cobots have been deployed to tackle non-ergonomic, repetitive, and boring daily tasks. This allows operators to be more focused on product quality and machine performance,” explained Antoniy Petrov, automation engineer at Schneider Electric.
Schneider Electric strives to remain at the forefront of innovation, and is constantly seeking out modern and reliable solutions to enhance its operations. According to the company, the UR5 cobots precisely delivers this – more efficient and productive operations.
“Our cobots were programmed to pick power breakers from the manufacturing line and place them into boxes,” said Masayuki Mase, country manager for Universal Robots Oceania.
“Once this task is completed, the cobot picks and places an empty box to be filled again, until the cart is filled with 10 boxes. Once the batch is finished, the cobot alerts the operator that it’s time for changeover.”
As one of the smallest cobots in the range, Mase said the UR5 is lightweight, flexible and tackles an array of tasks with ease.
“It offers a reach of 850mm, a payload of 5kg, a footprint of 149mm, and weighs in at just 20.6kg,” Mase added.
“This medium-duty robot integrates seamlessly and makes quick work of all tasks – as experienced at Schneider Electric.”
On this plant, the cobots follow processes like emergency stops. The cobot works fully autonomously, and the operator is only needed for the changeover.
“The cobot can reject full conveyors to provide a safe working area for the operator to remove the units, which are unfit for use,” Petrov said.
“It can also alert the operator when changeover is needed, and handled manual requests from the operator to stop operation and move into a safe position.
“The UR5s return on investment in this particular setting is around 24 months.”
Speaking on the uptake of automation in the electronics and technology sector, Mase has seen strong demand across all major sectors – including electronics and technology.
“Covid-19 highlighted the need for independent supply chains by local manufacturers,” Mase concluded.
