The Assembly Top 50 devoted $110.6 billion to capital expenditures in 2010. That’s 9 percent more than they spent in 2009, but it’s 21 percent less than they spent in 2008. Only 15 of the Top 50 spent more on property, plants and equipment in 2010 than they spent in 2008.
In 2010, the Top 50 employed 6.86 billion people worldwide. That’s 4 percent more than they employed in 2009, but it’s slightly under the total for 2008.
Vision systems used to guide robots pose different challenges for manufacturers than vision systems used for part inspection. The biggest challenge is guiding robots in 2-1/2D applications, where guidance is used so the camera maintains a proper perspective of a part that is level but included in a stack.
There’s an ongoing push toward lighter, smaller, thinner and more environmentally friendly wire and cable insulation in the auto industry. This affects cutting, stripping, crimping and other wire processing applications.
The development and capabilities of dual-arm
robots are topics of worldwide interest. Very few such robots are currently
performing assembly. But university researchers in Europe and Asia
hope to change that in the very near future.
Bombardier Aerospace has borrowed several ideas from the auto industry that it hopes will help streamline production of the new CSeries regional jetliner.
Northrop Grumman, Sikorsky and other aerospace defense manufacturers recently unveiled state-of-the-art assembly lines that will enable them to boost capacity and improve efficiency.
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