If you take a look at current international business trends, you’ll notice a few key things. The first is that innovation is moving at breakneck speed, bringing every industrial and technological business along with it. The second is that if you look closer at where that innovation is best fostered, you’ll see nothing represented more fully than custom machine automation.
A successful automation system is able to integrate every disparate subsystem at a facility and combine them into a more efficient and cohesive whole. This statement brings the most essential and foundational benefit of automation into focus: it makes everything work more efficiently. This isn’t new news, either: according to consumer data provider Statista, the automation industry is projected to generate over two hundred billion dollars worldwide this year alone.
Not all automation systems are the same. Specifically, machine automation focuses on the controlling of machines through information technology. Custom machine automation focuses on the controlling of machines through technology that has been designed, tested, and developed to meet your unique needs and pain points.
If it’s accepted that generalized machine automation can significantly improve workflow efficiency, there’s no denying that customized machine automation can do all that and then some. In today’s post we’re going to be taking a closer look at the many varied ways custom machine automation can improve the efficiency and efficacy of your business.
It gives you more direct control over your processes. At its most simple, a machine automation system contains two components: power and control. Part of the system distributes the power to the various control components like drives, motors, or other machinery. Adoption and integration can be complex, but once implemented these solutions give you complete, direct control over your processes. If you want to make a change to a certain workflow, you’ll be able to access an interface to do it. In a traditional workplace, these sorts of changes would involve hours and hours spent on bringing employees up to speed. In a workplace with a custom machine automation solution in place, these changes can happen as soon as they’re needed.
It can improve the overall productivity of your laborers. Humans make mistakes. There’s nothing wrong with that fact, but it means that when humans are doing work that could be automated, they’re doing it less efficiently. By looking at your workflows and determining what can be augmented with custom automated machinery, you’re giving your laborers a chance to waste less time on menial tasks. Less time wasted means less general malaise, a better mindset, and the ability to focus their attention on internal innovation.
Quality assurance will become a lot more straightforward. Defect rates go down when using custom machine automation. Customized solutions are going to be made, down to the detail, to complete the specific tasks or produce the specific products you need. Better production uniformity means less money wasted recycling or disposing of problematic products. Additionally, it’s far easier to determine the root of any issues and troubleshoot them when you have an easily accessed log of all the work a specific machine has completed.
There are some things that just can’t be done manually. Some things simply can’t be done to standard without the help of machinery. Rapid prototyping, for example. Quickly producing scale models of physical parts intended for production can be done rather easily by an automated robotics or machine solution. If the same task were to be done by a traditional team, it would take weeks. A custom machine automation solution may be just the solution you need.
You’ll get a solution that takes into account the singularity of your company. Nobody does what you do exactly the way you do it. No one makes the same product or performs the same service. If the business you’re supporting is wholly unique, why would you want an automation solution that isn’t? Custom solutions improve efficiency by taking your unique pain points, needs, and concerns into account before the machinery is developed. This gives you the ability to guarantee that you get exactly what you need instead of a general solution that only meets you halfway.
Automation equals efficiency. Because of this, custom machine automation solutions in particular are already becoming a cornerstone of the industrial and manufacturing industries. If you’re interested in learning more about what automation solutions can do for your particular business, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team at Summit Engineered Automation.