Robotics & Automation Awareness
Automation decisions go wrong in both directions. Some plants automate a task that was never the bottleneck and get a fast robot feeding a slow queue. Others avoid automation on cost grounds while paying for overtime and rework on a task a machine would do more consistently. This day covers what each technology is genuinely good at, the safety and integration work people underestimate, and how to build a business case that includes the costs that only appear after installation.
Programme Agenda
The Technology Families
Fixed and hard automation, industrial robots, collaborative robots, autonomous mobile robots and automated guided vehicles, and machine vision. What each is actually good at, and typical cost ranges.
Which Tasks Suit Automation
Repeatability, part presentation, cycle time, variability and volume. The tasks that automate well, the ones that look automatable and are not, and why part presentation is the constraint more often than the robot.
Cobots and the Shared Workspace
What makes a collaborative application collaborative, the speed and force limits involved, and why a cobot is frequently slower than the manual process it replaced. Where the trade is worth it.
Mobile Robots and Material Movement
Guided against autonomous navigation, fleet management, traffic and infrastructure requirements. The floor, network and layout conditions that determine whether a deployment works.
Safety and Risk Assessment
Risk assessment obligations, guarding, light curtains, safety-rated stops, and the requirement that a collaborative application be assessed as an application rather than certified as a product. Commissioning and validation.
Integration Reality
End effectors, fixturing, part feeding, upstream and downstream conveyance, and integration with existing control systems. The costs beyond the robot that regularly double a project budget.
Workforce and Change
Redeployment rather than redundancy, the new maintenance and programming skills required, operator acceptance, and involving the people who run the process in the selection.
Building the Business Case
Labour, quality, throughput, scrap and safety benefits against capital, integration, maintenance, training and downtime during commissioning. Participants appraise a candidate application from their own plant.
Learning Outcomes:
Distinguish the main automation technology families and their strengths
Assess whether a specific task is genuinely suitable for automation
Judge when a collaborative application is the right choice despite slower cycles
Evaluate site conditions for mobile robot deployment
State the safety risk assessment obligations for a robotic application
Budget for integration costs beyond the robot itself
Plan the workforce and skills change automation requires
Appraise a candidate automation project with full lifetime costs
Duration: 1 Day (8 Hours)
Training Hours: 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Level: Beginner
Training Mode: Physical, Online, or Hybrid
HRD Corp SBL-KHAS Claimable
Certificate of Completion included
Frequently Asked Questions
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