Swell cells: Testing & Quality Assurance

If you’re interested in boosting efficiency and cutting costs — and what manufacturer isn’t? — creating a work cell may very well be worth your while. Today, the task often involves acquiring some form of robotic assistance. To those put off by this idea, some experts point out that the current crop of factory robots includes those designed with cost-conscious and complexity-averse buyers in mind.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a work cell is an arrangement of manufacturing resources aimed at reducing production time and costs while also increasing product quality. Based on the principles of lean manufacturing, work cells are designed to achieve these goals by
improving the flow of production processes and eliminating waste.

Work cells take manufacturers in a direction opposite that in which they traditionally moved. In the past, those that wanted to increase their production capabilities would keep building additional facilities and adding employees, noted Andrew Rowley, general sales manager at SW North America Inc. in New Hudson, Michigan, a supplier of CNC machining centers, automation and complete system solutions. But with building costs skyrocketing and labor becoming more expensive and harder to find, production processes have to become more compact and more efficient — and that’s where work cells come in.

This complete production system (shown above) includes two horizontal machining centers, robot automation, shop floor comparators, a laser marker and a part storage unit. Image courtesy of SW North America

“With a work cell, you’re trying to get everything completed in a limited amount of floor space and with a limited amount of human or operator engagement,” Rowley said.

That means workers don’t have to walk across the shop floor or to adjacent buildings to accomplish different tasks involved in completing a production process.

“You want to try to make it like an assembly line — nice and efficient,” said Joe Sanders, sales engineering assistant manager at Mazak Corp., a machine manufacturer in Florence, Kentucky.

With less space and fewer employees involved in manufacturing, product costs go down, Rowley said, which gives companies more opportunities to make competitive bids for new business. In addition, he pointed out that the less parts are handled during production, the better part quality tends to be.

Automation Boom

Today, many work cells include some form of automation. Before the pandemic, Rowley reports that SW customers weren’t asking for automation.

“They used to be able to just throw bodies at a machine,” he said.

But with workers becoming scarce and expensive, interest in automation has spiked, he noted. And once customers decide to automate, they start considering all the possibilities for a robot on the shop floor.

“So now you’re looking at a work cell where the robot can do not only machine tending but also additional work like laser marking and deburring,” he said. “And then operators are available to do a higher level of work.”

Relieved of menial and time-consuming production tasks, machinists are freed up to take on more cerebral and creative work, such as programming, setting up new jobs and creating jigs and fixtures, said Craig Zoberis, founder and president of RoboJob-USA in Burr Ridge, Illinois, a systems integrator of robotic automation for CNC mills and lathes.

Once shops decide to add automation to a work cell, one of the first questions they have to answer is how much they want to spend on it. According to Sanders, a low-end option would be a simple cobot, which could handle some basic tasks but would still leave shop floor personnel with plenty to do. At the higher end would be customized systems featuring an industrial robot capable of handling operations such as gauging, laser marking and cleaning, in addition to machine tending.

SW uses simulation software to come up with appropriate automation solutions for specific work cells.

“We look at how much can we do with automation and how much would there still have to be human interaction in that cell,” Rowley said. “Then we calculate the costs for the customer.”

Generally speaking, Rowley said those costs can range from less than $100,000 for a low-end cobot-based cell to millions of dollars for a large, fully integrated automated cell. As for the time it takes to produce an automated cell from concept to completion, he added, that normally ranges roughly from 30-some weeks to a year. This includes the time it takes to get a clear understanding of a customer’s needs and design the appropriate automation system, as well as the wait for system components to become available.

“There are still a lot of lead time issues in today’s market,” Rowley said. “There are certain robots that can take us a year to get. Others we can buy pretty much off the shelf.”

No matter what type of automation system is installed, it won’t have an entirely positive impact on a production process if shop personnel believe it’s simply a means of cutting staff or that it takes away from their jobs. So Sanders pointed out that management must sell automation to workers, telling them it will add to their skill sets and make them more efficient so the company can compete more effectively with other firms.

By making it clear to people that they’ll be trained to do more than just operate a machine and move parts in and out of it, management can turn automation into a net plus in its dealings with both current and potential employees, Zoberis said.

Raw and finished parts are moved through each of three machining cells on a loop conveyor diverting system. Image courtesy Mazak

Handled the right way, he said, “robotic automation is not just a retention factor for keeping good personnel. It’s a factor for attracting the right talent to work in the organization.”

Normally, SW asks customers to choose one person as the lead in their automation project and then send that person to its facility for a few days of training while work on their cell is in its final stages. SW typically also requests that the chosen person be sent to an automation school run by robot suppliers, such as Fanuc or ABB, for a few days of additional training. Rowley believes that this type of training regimen is “pretty standard” for all companies that supply automation solutions.

Reaping the Benefits

How much of a difference can an automated work cell make in a manufacturing operation? Rowley cites a customer that had a traditional workflow that required parts to be taken by operators to nine different stations.

By modernizing this work cell and combining operations, he said, “we were able to (turn) that workflow into a centralized system so that one work cell was able to produce what nine individual cells were producing.”