Market trends and business prospects

Stäubli was one of the earliest industrial automation companies. It was founded in the late 1800s and quickly developed the advanced technology used in the weaving industry before the end of this century. The company even owns the Jacquard machine. Jacquard was the pioneer manufacturer of the weaving machine that defined the original industrial revolution-and the inventor of the punch card used to control the machine, from which the principles of computer programming flowed. 

Then in the early 1980s, Stäubli purchased the Unimation business from Westinghouse. Unimation was the company that developed the first industrial robotic arm Unimate.

Today, Stäubli is still one of the largest industrial robotics and automation companies in the world, and its product manager in the United States is Paul Deady. 

In an exclusive interview with Robotics and Automation News, Deady gave an overview of Stäubli's business.

He said: "Stäubli was founded in 1892. It started in the textile industry in a small shop in Switzerland. It grew up from there. Now, we have three departments: Of course, textiles are the foundation of our business; Robots-We have a big business in connectors; then we entered robotics, and we were actually one of the earliest robotics companies.

"So, if you see'Unimation' on the side of our robots-this is a tribute to Unimate robots. Generally speaking, as a milestone, the birth of industrial robots can be traced back to 1985, when Unimation put robots in general Car factory.

"At the time we were one of Unimation's distributors, and later we acquired the company from Westinghouse Electric in 1987. Therefore, our roots are deep and can be traced back to the beginning of the robotic revolution in the automotive industry."

Deady's area of ​​responsibility for Stäubli is automobiles. He is headquartered in the United States, and he has a huge operating market. The country produces about 24 million cars every year.

According to statistics released by the International Organization of Automobile Manufacturers (OICA), the car production of the top 10 countries in the second quarter of 2016 is shown in the following figure.

According to OICA, the total number of cars produced worldwide in the second quarter of 2016 was approximately 47 million. These are the 39 countries that the organization named on its list and the countries it has included in the “other” category.

Deady explained his work in more detail. "First of all, we cooperate with the automotive supplier communities in all market segments. This is the exterior, interior, powertrain, electrical, chassis, etc.. I would say that we are working with these in a very... in-depth and symbiotic manner. People cooperate.

"We have established working relationships with all the major names in the supplier community you may have heard of."

Leading auto parts manufacturers include Bosch, Magna and Delphi, to name just three examples.

The total output value of the US automobile and auto parts manufacturing industry reached 70 billion U.S. dollars in 2015. In this era of debt collapse driven by trillions of dollars in derivatives, this sounds like a moderate number, but it is also due to economic and strategic reasons. Importance, the automobile industry obviously occupies a special place in the minds of Americans.

This may be because the land area of ​​the United States is so large that you need a car if you want to go anywhere, or because the United States may be the first country where almost everyone drives a car.

Of course, the presidential election Donald Trump digs into this nostalgia in his campaign, even though he mainly talked about wanting to bring job-creating people back to the United States. For this reason, it is reported that Ford announced in the past few days that it will stop some plans to expand overseas manufacturing and instead build factories in the United States.

According to reports, even Foxconn, a Taiwan-based manufacturer that mainly produces iPhones and iPads for Apple in China, is reportedly planning to expand its manufacturing operations in the United States.

The relocation of manufacturing companies back to the United States may make interesting headlines and give Trump a boost, but it may not necessarily bring a lot of work to humans; however, for robots and robotics companies, this may be a big deal. Start.

As Deady explained, the whole idea of ​​introducing robots into the workplace is to eliminate the most difficult tasks for humans. "Traditionally, robots are used for repeatable, dirty or dangerous tasks, or, frankly, humans don't want to do it.

"More and more robots are becoming ubiquitous, and their applications are getting wider and wider, and will continue to be so.

"But this is not to say that there is still no place for humans... For example, Mercedes-Benz has replaced some robots with humans in its production facilities, because humans are naturally adaptable and have special expressive capabilities.

"Humans are very good at picking parts, manipulating them into the correct geometry, and then placing them where they are needed."

The meaning of Deady-for those of us who "expression" usually means clearly expressing-is that humans can move in any direction and are more agile than the most complex robots.

This is why Mercedes-Benz replaced some of the robots on the production line and introduced humans to achieve a higher level of car customization to meet the needs of the most discerning customers.

This is not to say that robots are about to be eliminated, and humans will now return to the automobile manufacturing production line in large numbers, but many people believe that this does herald a new and growing trend in manufacturing: a high degree of customization.

Robots will still be heavily involved in the process, but they will be connected together in the factory, that is, all over the world. Many or all leading manufacturers are developing or have implemented this "smart factory" concept, almost like a node on the "Industrial Internet".

Deady made his point: "In general, there are currently two very broad themes that are changing the industry. One is collaborative robots or collaborative robots. That is a robot defined by ISO standard 15066, which requires it It is forced, and it is limited to a certain speed, etc... The idea is to allow you to collaborate with robots very safely. Robots interact with robots in a collaborative manufacturing space to ensure human-machine work Safety.

"Another trend is Industry 4.0. Broadly speaking, it is about communication between machines and equipment on the factory floor. If you want, you can make it a'smart factory'. Traditionally, manufacturing involves a series of processes—for example Robot programming, automation programming-and then it's very static from there.

"The idea has always been to make the factory a more dynamic space that can adapt to different product cycles, etc."

This smart, interconnected manufacturing system requires more computer-aided design applications. Stäubli has its own industrial robot simulation program-Stäubli Robotics Suite-which can theoretically be extended to software, enabling you to design virtual intelligence Factory-similar to what Audi did in the planning phase of the smart factory in Mexico.

It's like construction software, where you can design buildings in detail, including nuts, bolts, and light switches, but there are more virtual models of robots and machinery—all with precise and realistic details.

Methods for evaluating industrial robot arms include indicators related to accuracy and repeatability. Deady explained: "There is a difference between repeatability and accuracy.

"Repeatability means that I can add and subtract a certain number of the same positions repeatedly. Accuracy is a higher level task, which means that it can support the import of trajectory data and express this very accurately.

"So, for example, if you are in the manufacturing industry and you operate in a 3D CAD-type environment, and you put the robot trajectory into that environment and then export it to the robot, how accurate is it? It follows that? This is better than Repeatability and more challenging application task types.

"The performance attributes of Stäubli robots are traditionally very repeatable, but we are also very accurate-much higher than our competitors, which is our advantage."

Stäubli has come a long way from a small shop in Switzerland. Regardless of its income at the time, it may not be equal to the $1 billion in annual income it has today. If Trump does "bring" manufacturing back to the United States as he said, Stäubli may be one of the companies that will benefit.

Submitted as follows: industrial robot, industry marked as: accuracy, automation, automotive, dead, factory, industrial, industrial, manufacturing, repeatability, robot, robot, robot, smart, staubli, unimation, vehicle

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