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Ninety percent of robotics today are being put to work on assembly lines in
manufacturing products. The first industrial robot was installed 50 years ago in a production line.
Auto industry plant-floor is where robots do the majority of their work. Even though 90% of
today’s robots on the planet work in production lines, 50% of this robotics are working in
production lines in the automotive industry (Vulavala, 26). Due to the increase in demand for
this robotics, the sales of industrial robotics has increased by 23% in the previous years,
according to a study conducted by BGC. For this, the costs of these industrial robotics will
decrease by 16% (Young). This will lead to more and more car manufacturers converting to
industrial robotics for the purpose of manufacturing vehicles rather than depending on human
labor due to the low costs of the robotics. Also, the innovative technology in robotics allows for
the car manufacturer to create new and logical ways to quickly produce cars in an efficient
manner; as shown in the Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly Line Balancing
Problems.
Robotics are becoming more popular in the automotive industry due to their low costs,
both up front and in the long run. According to an article published by M2presswire, increasing
investments in the automotive industry is significantly driving growth in the industrial robotics
market, with the investments growing 22% on average per year. The day to day technological
advancements are helping the manufacturing process and other such tasks perform a lot faster
and cost effective (1). Also, according to a BCG (Boston Consulting Group) study, industrial
robot sales has increased by 23% since the previous few years. A recent report estimates that the
cost of using industrial robots will decrease by 16% by 2025. Robots are becoming cheaper to
build and purchase and are more agile than their human counterparts humans. According to a
Stanford University study, companies such as Boston-based Rethink Robotics are “Already
offering agile factory robots for as little as $25,000, which is equivalent to paying a full-time
human worker $4 an hour over the lifetime of the machine.” Being equivalent to the cost of a
human per hour, robotics is proving to be the more adequate and lucrative choice for companies
because they are becoming less expensive than humans and they produce quality products at an
efficient pace.
Using robotics in the assembly lines stimulates the innovation of new and different
methods to mass produce vehicles. According to an article by Mojtaba Aghajani, the need for
flexible production has increased, therefore the call for flexible assembly systems which is
played by robots has increased. As a response to this need, a two-sided assembly line is used to
produce large-sized and high-volume products; such as buses, cars, and trucks. Some tasks are
performed on the right side while other tasks are performed on the left side of the assembly line,
because it is parallel (1005). However, The Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly
Line Balancing Problems is an innovative method that has excelled the two-sided assembly line
model. The Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly Line Balancing Problems can
produce a certain type of product that must be simultaneously produced by using robots on a
station that work on opposite sides of the assembly line. The way this method works is that each
task has a predetermined set of relationships, however, the similarity of the robots allows them to
combine all of the tasks into one diagram. Unlike a one-sided assembly line, where the only
important factor is satisfaction of the precedence constraints that is crucial in the overall
assignment of several jobs in separate stations, two-sided lines share the same sequence of jobs
in each mated station. This a crucial segment for an organized assignment and should be thought
of. Jobs at opposite sides of the line can interfere with each other through priority constraints
which can cause a partial break time if a workstation needs to wait for a prior task to be
completed at the other end of the line. This is referred to as interference (1007). This robotics
find the ideal fit for all parts of car being manufactured. Because of this, as vehicles become
more complex due to innovations for its use, robots are depended on to lead minor and major
segments of assembly.
increased and so has the quality of the assembled product. This makes robots more effective at
are stored and analyzed in order to define breakdowns and faults. A user-friendly man-machine
interface is developed on a standard operator panel (1041). This is primarily due to the fact that
the process for the assembly of a body of a car is complex; including: welding multiple
component parts, finish welding stations to connect the assembly, locating preliminary pre-
assembled component parts. A lot of care has to be used to ensure the greatness of the product’s
quality. Fixtures and the welding quality are most significant. The nut welding process uses
technology and robotics in manufacturing weld nuts (1042). This assembly process is made up of
robotics, Group Technology (GT), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), automated material
handling systems, storage and retrieval systems, Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC)
machine tools, and barcoding or other automated identification techniques. AMTs are a
manufacturing systems (Khan, 2). This shows that the quality of today’s automotive products is
dependent on the technologies and systems used by the robotics in the assembly lines to meet the
high requirements of the consumers. Lastly, due to the need of automotive companies to keep up
with technology, “attractive” car parts are being assembled. In an article by Alina Parvu, the
automotive industry is facing nowadays the need to compete in the market in terms of quality,
cost and time related to the products which are offered. Vehicle design is developing more and
more (131). Through design optimization, lighter and easily manufactured mechatronic product
is obtained (132). Innovations like the rear-view camera, or sensors on the car’s sides to notify
the driver of surrounding vehicles, all make the assembly and manufacturing process a lot more
time consuming and difficult. However, with the use of the robotics, the obstacles are easily
However, as the use of robotics in assembly lines in the automotive industry rises,
humans will become unemployed, which will negatively impact the environment. A drastic
effect of unemployment occurred in Youngstown Ohio for a majority of the twentieth century.
The various steel mills in Youngstown granted a great success that the city truly represented the
American dream, discussing the average income of workers and one of the nation’s highest
homeownership rates. However, as raw materials were being processed and manufactured
elsewhere after World War II, the city of Youngstown decreased in productivity. In the span of a
few years, Youngstown was quickly diminished losing more than 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in
job wages. This dramatic decrease later created the term regional depression. This economic
shift later disrupted the city by a mental and social breakdown. Several factors including:
depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more common. This caused the city’s
mental-health center to triple in size in a single decade. Due to this the city also constructed four
new prisons to keep up with amount of people committing crimes on a daily basis. The only
positive in the city was the construction of a museum that was dedicated to the erratic steel
industry that the economy depended on (Thompson). This shows that as jobs lay off their current
employees, then the society in which they live in will negatively be affected by it. Also, families
will become dysfunctional due to the loss of support from the jobs in which the parent or parents
fulfilled. This dysfunction disrupts the family and eventually causes problems, such as divorce
and depression. By laying off the current humans in the automotive industry, we are bound to
experience the same negative reaction in several cities across the United States and throughout
the world, because robotics is completing the same tasks as humans once did.
According to an article by Matthew Rendall, “Robots aren’t stealing our jobs — they’re
improving them.” From 2000 to 2010 alone, 5.6 million jobs disappeared. Interestingly, though,
only 13% of those jobs were lost due to international trade. The vast remainder, 85% of job
losses, stemmed from “productivity growth” — another way of saying machines replacing
human workers. In the past two decades, the productivity of manufacturing in the U.S. has
adapted to inflation by around 40%, and yearly value by U.S. factories has also reached a high of
$2.4 trillion. Even though job availability has decreased, productivity has substantially increased.
Workers who are manufacturing products for export have a higher education, and are receiving a
higher wage while making profitable products. This also includes the technology that permits the
workers to be able to make these profitable products. Point of there are a few million jobs that
are not fulfilled due primarily to the aging workforce in the manufacturing industry— the
average age of a manufacturing worker is almost 45 years old. This shows that robotics is
actually improving the current jobs in the automotive industry. Due to the fact that robots are
safer, and more reliable than humans. They are more ethical than using exploited labor overseas.
Plus, they’re incredibly cost-effective, often delivering return on investment (ROI) in 12 months
or less. That is a game-changer in an industry relentlessly driven by cost reduction and plagued
by slow-drip evolution (Rendall). As the average age of the manufacturing workers increases,
more jobs are going unfulfilled. However, robotics is able to fulfill the jobs and can be exploited
using and exploiting robotics to manufacture their vehicles. Robotics are shown to be more cost
effective than humans and can work strenuously for a continuous amount of time. Whereas
humans are not cost effective and must take breaks for personal reasons; such as vacation time,
sickness, paternal or maternal leave, and many other reasons. Also, using robotics is shown to
produce high quality products. Using the same types of robotics will not only allow them to
manufacture the vehicles quickly and efficiently, but it also allows them to interchange positions
in cases one robot malfunctions. The Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly Line
Balancing Problems uses this to its advantage to mass produce products at a quick pace.
In conclusion, robotics must be used as the primary method to mass produce vehicles as
opposed to humans because they are a lot more beneficial to the company that they will work for
as opposed to humans. Although not all humans will be completely replaced by robots, the
humans that manage to keep their position in the automotive industry are bound to receive higher
pay as well as be more educated than the other humans that worked for less pay and didn’t have
as great of an education. For these reasons, robotics has proven to be significant in vehicle
Aghajani, Mojtaba, et al. "Balancing of Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly Line with
Robot Setup Times." International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, vol. 74, no.
5-8, 15 Sept. 2014, pp. 1005-1016. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s00170-014-5945-x.
Khan, Asif and Kaynat Nasser. "Advanced Manufacturing Technologies for Smart and
Competitive Businesses." IUP Journal of Operations Management, vol. 15, no. 3, Aug. 2016,
pp. 7-17. EBSCOhost,
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&AN=118565656&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Rendall, Matthew. “Industrial robots will replace manufacturing jobs — and that’s a good thing.”
TechCrunch, 9 Oct. 2016, https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/09/industrial-robots-will-replace-
manufacturing-jobs-and-thats-a-good-thing/. Accessed 28 March 2016.
Thompson, Derek. "A World Without Work." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 17 Aug.
2015. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
Tuekel, D. B. and T. Talu. "Robotized Underbody Production Line for Automative Industry."
Annals of DAAAM & Proceedings, Jan. 2010, pp. 1041-1042. EBSCOhost,
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&AN=55674978&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Young, Angelo. “Industrial Robots Could Be 16% Less Costly To Employ Than People By
2025.” International Business Times, 11 Feb. 2015, http://www.ibtimes.com/industrial-robots-
could-be-16-less-costly-employ-people-2025-1811980.