Various ways to automate the manufacturing process and control expenses, without employee cutbacks, were examined. During examination, one spot on the company's production line stood out as a bottleneck. At this station, workers manually assembled electronic connector components, precisely pressed them together and placed them on printed circuit boards (PCBs). This led to frequent repetitive motion injuries and downtime for both the workers and the line. In addition, valuable time was spent changing equipment for each new batch of parts.

The solution was a robot-based automation system from Adept Technology (San Jose, CA). The automation system is based on the 550 SCARA robot, including the MV controller, VME vision system and V+ software. A bowl feeder feeds components to the robot's gripper. VME vision's automated inspection, measurement and motion guidance enables the robot to pick each component up and position it accurately on the PCB. It can pick up three components simultaneously.