Does this sound familiar? Management envisions “a sea of robots” on the shop floor. They haven’t deployed robots before, and they don’t have a specific goal in mind. They just want “automation.” The next thing you know, there’s a collaborative robot on the loading dock. Your job: Find something to do with it.
You’ve already got two projects to work on—both of which are behind schedule—but never mind that, you’ll see what this beast can do. So, you set it up to perform an operation at one of your more troublesome manual workstations, figuring a rapid return on investment (ROI) in labor costs alone.