February 2021 Volume 3

AUTOMATION

The Lean Side of Automation in a Forging Environment By Drew Locher

Automation: Finding its Place I recall reading an article towards the end of the 1990s that stated approximately 60% of the robots installed over the previous decade were ultimately decommissioned. While the general premise didn’t surprise me, the percentage presented did. After all, it often takes some time for technological innovations to ‘find their place’. Misapplication is to be expected in the early years. What the article described is what I believe has been true since that time. Robots and automation in general are best applied to processes that are just not conducive to humans, first and foremost unsafe environments. The robots that remained in service tended to operate in unsafe situations. There are certainly unsafe conditions in particular processes in the forging industry. Most would agree it is better to put a robot at risk, rather than a human life. Another application for automation is in highly repetitive processes. Any process with a cycle time of 20 seconds or less should be considered for automation. It is not just the physical challenge of such repetition, like potential repetitive motion injuries, but the mental strain on the people performing it. Processes with cycle times over 20 seconds require a bit more discussion. Automation may or may not be a cost-effective approach. I spoke with Mario Trizzino, an Engineer at Adaptec Solutions, headquartered in Rochester NY. Adaptec specializes in automation solutions covering a broad range of applications. He said that the automation projects in the forging industry with which he has been involved were for processes with cycle times of 6 to 25 seconds. Such cycle times are found in

high volume environments such as automotive. Interestingly, Mr. Trizzino said that at such short cycle times, the more cost-effective solutions tend to be a combination of automation and still-manual processes. Another application for automation has been found in non manufacturing environments where large data sets are involved. The availability of vast amounts of data, well beyond what humans and spreadsheets can handle, has given rise to automation tools in marketing, finance, and other industries. Algorithms have been created to identify patterns in the data. In addition, human decision making has been modelled to facilitate rapid action based on the patterns observed. Think of the automated trading of stocks and other financial instruments. I mention the non-manufacturing applications because there may be similar time sensitive situations in forging, trimming processes, for example. The time required to properly trim a part is directly related to the time after it exits the forging process. The longer the time, the greater the effort required to properly trim. Automation may be a solution as it can reduce the opportunity for parts to queue and reduce the variation in post-forging time. Achieving such consistency can have important quality and efficiency benefits. The application of automation as a means to reduce cost has to be carefully examined. A large portion of the decommissioned robots aforementioned were initially installed under the guise of cost reduction. However, we quickly learned in the 1980s and 1990s that the application of automation gave rise to other costs. Programmers

FIA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2021 38