On February 23rd, 2023 Rapid Robotics hosted a livestream titled “Get Real About Automation”. It consisted of three panels touching on many areas of manufacturing—and how automation can be a hugely impactful opportunity for manufacturing companies on many different fronts.

We’ll take a deeper dive into the Rapid Robotics technology stack and Robot as a Service (RaaS) offering in future post and link it here once it is live.

The State of the Industry

The first panel starred friend of Corso Systems, Nikki Gonzales, co-host of the Automation Ladies podcast. This panel focused heavily on how the manufacturing industry is currently suffering from a drought of talent. Along with few employees to operate facilities, there’s also an ever-aging technological foundation running the machinery in the factories.

As we have discussed many times before, aging manufacturing technology—both hardware and software—is are opportunities for manufacturing companies to see huge gains on their bottom line when they upgrade to modern standards. Even in 2023, it’s common to find PLCs that are literally older than some of the engineers working with them in a facility. Many times, these older devices were installed before modern connectivity like ethernet, OPC-UA, or MQTT were even a thought in someone’s mind!

Not only does outdated technology make managing maintenance and hardware failures difficult, it’s also hard to get younger folks excited about working in these facilities in today’s connected world. There must be a shift in the corporate mentality to embrace technology and automation to ensure continued success.

Now, we can leverage modern technology like Ignition’s Perspective Module where people can run production lines from their phone. By upgrading to PLCs like Opto 22’s groov EPIC platform, we can give the people in the plant assurance they can take on modern manufacturing challenges with full trust in the tools they are using to do their jobs.

With new technology controlling the facility, the younger workforce will get more excited about manufacturing. And Rapid Robotics is pushing to help ease the pain of hiring more people by making cobot technology as simple as possible to integrate into a production line. Removing the technical debt and labor cost sink of robot position and path programming is a huge step in the right direction. The biggest hurdle for using robots in facilities is a lack of workers with the expertise to program the robots. Even if you make an identical duplicate of a robot cell, you need to make fine adjustments to each robot given the achievable tolerances in construction. Rapid Robotics alleviates the need for this knowledge with advanced tools like an integrated vision system, machine learning algorithms, and simulation. All together, this makes it possible to deploy a robot without having to program every single move it needs to make.

In short—as always—manufacturing is usually a few years to a decade behind consumer technology. Fortunately, in recent years there have been new advancements from companies like Rapid Robotics, Ignition, and PLCs from Opto 22 starting to close the gap.

The Workforce of the Future

The second panel starred another Corso Systems’ favorite, Andrew “The MFG” Crowe, the founder of the New American Manufacturing Renaissance. This panel was focused on how culture in manufacturing companies drives their recruiting and retention practices. Andrew shared his incredible story as an example of how manufacturing is the perfect industry for people from literally any background to find a path to success.

As we have said time and time again, the desire and ability to learn are the most important prerequisites for success in manufacturing. You don’t need an Engineering or Computer Science degree—or any degree for that matter. Plenty of people excel in manufacturing by simply being exposed to it, then putting in the time and effort to learn and improve over time.

Andrew hammered this point home many times, adding to the theme of the first panel regarding technology, “The more that we have this fear of automation and robotics, and we have that archaic mentality, the manufacturing labor crisis is just going to keep growing.”

There was also a good deal of discussion about how to attract the next generation of manufacturing talent, as Andrew has so eloquently coined as “screenagers”. This stood on the foundation from the first panel: manufacturing has a unique opportunity to embrace technology as a way to get the attention of a younger generation—and to get them into the fold.

This was an exciting panel, and was nice to see a lot of focus on culture, technology, and education as what the manufacturing industry needs to focus on for continuing to build a great labor force.

Current Solutions for Immediate Growth

The final panel of the livestream tied the day together with a focus on how technology can advance manufacturing—and how technology and automation can bolster a manufacturing company’s capability when there isn’t enough labor to go around. Aaron Prather of ASTM International added, “If there's simply no one out there to hire, what you need to do is find automation that can supercharge your current workforce.”

While we don’t agree that there aren’t enough people to go around for the jobs in manufacturing, we do agree that there’s an opportunity for technology to help manufacturing companies do what they do better. They can easily attract more talent by leveraging ideas and insights from people like Nikki Gonzales and Andrew Crowe, and Corso Systems.

This panel also highlighted how Machine Learning and Vision System technology are transforming what is possible in a manufacturing facility. By using technology like Vision Systems, it is possible to rapidly iterate on processes—and enable rapid deployment of tools like the Rapid Machine Operator (RMO) from Rapid Robotics—with minimal programming required.

Wrapping Up

We’re really excited about the possibilities available using advanced technology solutions like what Rapid Robotics is doing with their RMO robots.

While there is still a gap between where manufacturing is as compared to the world at large in regards to technology adoption, companies like Rapid Robotics are removing many of the hurdles and barriers to entry for advanced equipment like robot cells on the plant floor.

Automation is not scary. It is simply a tool to help people and companies do what they do better with repeatable results, and increased human safety in the workplace.

We live in very exciting times!