Guidelines

Automation today - A necessity for tomorrow

Humans have always used technology to enhance their physical functions. Technology offers a great opportunity for the development and safeguarding of existing jobs and the creation of new ones. For every industrial company, the economic environment is characterized by increased competition, high quality demands, short delivery times and rising costs. This results in the demand for more cost-saving and flexible production, i.e. rationalization.

While high levels of automation have already been achieved in many conventional manufacturing areas, the development of new products is creating interesting and new areas of application for automation technologies.

Today, every production location is judged very critically and also often questioned, be it because of the high wage, ancillary wage and production costs or quite simply because of the framework conditions in general.

• Certainly, we in Switzerland are also among the countries with very high labor costs. However, we can see that other countries have reached our level or even overtaken us.
• On the other hand, we have well-known and good arguments in favor of Switzerland as a location for services and production.
• The number of working hours in our country is still relatively high, and the absenteeism rate is still low.
• Compared with competitor countries, we also continue to have very good product quality.
• One, under certain circumstances, negative aspect can certainly be the island situation in which we find ourselves in relation to the EU countries.
• Over time, therefore, companies in the EU area could increasingly switch to sourcing their goods from manufacturers in their own economic area, especially if comparable services are offered there.

International approvals and regulations must be complied with. Approval tests must be possible quickly, efficiently and without national obstacles. Passenger traffic, goods traffic and money traffic must be handled simply and effectively and constantly meet not only economic but also ecological requirements.

Automation is the actual shifting of work from humans to automats with the help of machines and technical advances.

Thus, automation means networking with processes, information, control variables, etc. Automation promotes the economy through the use of power, resources, energy and investment.

• Automation does not necessarily mean full automation. However, it is primarily seen as a rationalization measure.
• A large number of high-performance sensors, actuators, modules and systems of excellent quality with an optimum price/performance ratio are available.
• After the selection of the optimal technology, the mechanization of functions is carried out, followed by their networking, control and integration.
• Then comes the idea of coordinating various work processes with each other through clever networking, thus reducing throughput times and making delivery times, costs and personnel deployment more conscious.
• Automation of a production is a prerequisite to bring a product competitively to the market and to be able to serve it successfully.
• Each automation step must and should be well considered. We deliberately do not network certain functions so that one person can perform certain control functions. People are often better able to carry out complex and time-consuming loading or assembly work. This also preserves jobs and often saves considerable investment.
• Ongoing optimization of the entire value chain is and remains essential.

Automation is very closely related to the development of a product and should therefore already be included in the development phase.

It can be very costly to subsequently implement cost-optimized automation for a product that is starting up or has already been launched.

Of course, the success of any automation depends mainly on whether the planned quantities can actually be achieved with the budgeted assumptions. This is the decisive element, since the costs of a plant can, after all, only be settled via the units produced.

Automation brings quality improvements

Certainly, a more uniform quality of the products is achieved, since monotonous work is always carried out in the same way by a plant.

Many automatic control functions also trigger high investments as a result. In an automated process, certain defects only become apparent at the end of processing. If a product fails at this point, the loss can be significant because of the machining and material already consumed.

One solution is not to automate the entire process, but to continue to use manual labor for certain work positions.

One advantage of manual work is that many pairs of eyes follow the manufacturing process according to defined criteria and can intervene immediately in the event of blemishes. However, such manual scrap control is strenuous and therefore involves certain risks.

Another reason for automation is quality assurance

It may happen that a certain operation must be performed in any case to ensure the function of the product. This guarantee can only be fulfilled with an automated unit that can be logged and which performs the specified operation or triggers a fault message.

Automation is also very often used to relieve employees of unpleasant, tiring, unhealthy, dangerous, monotonous or barely fulfilling work.

At the same time, however, highly interesting jobs are created for skilled and operating personnel. Experience shows that the supervision of an automated plant is a much more highly valued activity for semi-skilled personnel than is the case with work on an assembly line. These employees are transformed from guided to leading employees.

Our experience shows that breakdowns are to be expected even in complex, elaborate plants. The opinion that ghost shifts can be run without personnel is not true in many areas.

Certainly, a simple machine can be operated without supervision without any problems. Otherwise, however, such also need monitoring personnel who can intervene immediately in the event of malfunctions, make decisions and trigger actions.

Ghost shifts raise another problem: Material replenishment and the removal of finished products place high demands on the entire logistics and must be solved at great expense (both technically and financially). Certainly, ghost shifts are very economical. But in order to be able to achieve a high level of production reliability and the planned degree of utilization, a lot also has to be organized and structured in terms of personnel.

However, automation services also have their price. During the realization of a task some points are nevertheless of crucial importance around the, usually very high expectations at all to be able to fulfill.

One problem that should not be underestimated is the precision requirements of the individual parts. Transport and handling of the parts place much higher demands on cleanliness, shape accuracy, tolerances, etc. than with manual processing.

• The requirements for the individual subsections (mechanics, hydraulics, pneumatics, drive technology, electrics, electronics and IT) must be defined down to the last detail, constantly taking into account the cost implications.
• The weakest link in the chain determines operational reliability and thus availability.
• Simple yet competent communication between man and machine must be ensured.
• First and foremost, process reliability must be guaranteed.
• The training and education effort must be efficient.
• Incorrect manipulations must not affect the operator, the product, or the machine or plant.
• The consequent consequence: considerable software and hardware expenditure for special operating modes, fault logs, evaluations, protective devices, etc.
• If a service call has to be made, the customer is dependent on rapid and competent service.
• The support in this area must be guaranteed for years.
• A standard of performance that is optimal in all respects ultimately puts the price of a successful investment in a plant or machine into perspective.