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Robotics Transforming Assembly & Distribution
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2012-11-26
How many humans does it take to build an electric shaver?
 Fewer than before, at least at the Philips Electronics factory in the Netherlands, according to the New York Times.
 In fact, installing fasteners is one of the few jobs left to humans at the state-of-the-art facility. Most of the assembling is handled by 128 robot arms with "yoga-like flexibility," the Times reports. With the assembly line running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, "there are robots everywhere and few human workers," writes John Markoff of the Times. "All of the heavy lifting and almost all of the precise work is done by robots that string together solar cells and seal them under glass. The human workers do things like trimming excess material, threading wires and screwing a handful of fasteners into a simple frame for each panel."
 The new Dutch facility requires only one-tenth the number human workers as a sister factory in China.
"This is the future," Markoff writes. "A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution." The falling costs and growing sophistication of robots have renewed debate among economists and technologists over how quickly jobs will be lost, according to the Times.
 "At what point does the chain saw replace Paul Bunyan?" asked Flextronics executive Mike Dennison. "There's always a price point, and we're very close to that point."
 At Boeing, the future of robotic assembly has already arrived. "Boeing's wide-body commercial jets are now riveted automatically by giant machines that move rapidly and precisely over the skin of the planes," Markoff writes. "Even with these machines, the company said it struggles to find enough workers to make its new 787 aircraft. Rather, the machines offer significant increases in precision and are safer for workers."
 And the trend is not limited to manufacturing. Such advances in manufacturing are also transforming other sectors, including distribution, "where robots that zoom at the speed of the world's fastest sprinters can store, retrieve and pack goods for shipment far more efficiently than people," Markoff notes.
"We're on the cusp of completely changing manufacturing and distribution," stated Gary Bradski, a machine-vision scientist who is a founder of Industrial Perception. "I think it's not as singular an event, but it will ultimately have as big an impact as the Internet."
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provided by FIN, arranged by Fastener World Inc.
2012-11-26

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