Automation is the New Normal

Why it’s Time to Automate Manufacturing

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It is officially time to start focusing on what the new normal will bring. Ready or not, the future is coming and while you can’t change the weather, you can choose what you wear.

The only way to keep up these days is by monitoring and working with the progression of lifestyle trends. By integrating automation into your processes for product design, product manufacturing and product evolution you are given the key to managing the future of business.

This starts immediately at concept design. We have the advantage of knowing exactly what consumers are looking for in a product and how they will use it. Connected products include GPS, cameras, microphones, and the right algorithms to spell out their needs. By properly managing this data, your customers are telling you exactly what they want.

This advantage is a great place to start, but today, designing a great product is not enough to stay competitive. The product needs to offer variety, tailored to the flavour a customer is looking for. With all your competition easily accessible online, your product needs to stand out and be that thing everyone is looking for. We’ve all heard, “you can’t be everything to everyone” but what we can be is flexible. With a flexible product design and automated manufacturing, it is both possible and affordable to create the variations your customer base is looking for with minimal effort.

Automated factories are designed to execute to exact specifications with a built-in paper trail. With a modular design and programmable settings, flawless assembly can be executed for a myriad of options. Changes to product designs and product evolution are affordably managed with minimal effort.

Speaking of minimal effort, automated manufacturing and automated test reduce the number of operators and technicians on the manufacturing floor. As such, a few factors increase as a result.

1. Quality and Accuracy

At the end of the day, machines are not subjective and do exactly what they are programmed to do. Results are never questionable, it’s simply pass or fail.

2. Speed & Volume

Machines don’t get tired or hungry. If production needs to run 24/7…it can! If an operator can’t make it to the work site, it doesn’t need to affect productivity.

3. Product Insight & Machine Learning

Keep track of everything that is going on in the factory. Which batches pass? Which batches fail? Which assets were performing the work? Do they need servicing? Where were the batches dispatched…what happens if there is a recall?

Finally, outsourcing to Contract Manufacturers (CMs) has always been a clear way to manage costs, keep up with volume-demand and meet deadlines. Keeping track of offsite manufacturing can be challenging, particularly when your product will be dispatched around the world. Repairs, returns and recalls are expensive. They are worse without proper traceability regarding the root and reason for the defect. By streamlining and automating your CM locations, they simply become an extension of your local branch.

Working uniformly towards a common goal with flexibility is what will bring success to manufacturing of the future. And all of this is brought to the entire product lifecycle through the investment in automation.