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In the Trenches with Collaborative Robots

P&G’s Mark Lewandowski walks us through a risk assessment for successful robot applications from an engineer’s perspective.

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According to the latest research from PMMI Business Intelligence, while many CPGs are using robots (mainly for palletizing) most have not yet employed a collaborative robot to work alongside a human.

P & G, maker of everything from Tide to diapers to paper towels to Braun shavers, started investigating collaborative robots back in 2010! And applications as varied as those products listed above all use robotics as a key way to automate the process.

“If you haven't figured out from the way I'm dressed yet, I am not a marketing or a sales guy: I am an engineer. So, what you're going to get here is the perspective from an engineer in the trenches,” Lewandowski told the crowd at the FORUM on the floor of PACK EXPO Las Vegas.

“So, at P & G we do pioneer. We believe that through our engineering organizations, and through our process and R&D organizations, we bring a lot of innovation into how we manufacture and create products,” said Lewandowski.

“So why did we, as a company, start using collaborative robots? Well, they’re quite simple to implement and use. The cost of implementing some of these cage-free robots can be a part of it…but, a bigger reason is the reduced engineering costs: being able to easily integrate and develop an application using collaborative robot technologies and greatly reduce the amount of time and effort needed, which reduces the amount, the overall cost, of a deployed solution onto your factory floor,” Lewandowski continued.

“We can take these robots that are adaptive, they’re reconfigurable, we can take them from a certain application today, very easily reconfigure that application, and have it doing something else tomorrow.”

So, collaborative robots are smaller, lighter, easy to move around and have intuitive programming. But Lewandowski disputes the “sales claims” that the robots are “safe” and require no fencing or guards.

“We hear that all the time, that these robots are cage-free and require no fencing or guards. Well, not necessarily true,” said Lewandowski.

Lewandowski points to ISO/TS 15066 as your guide. He was on the committee who wrote the safety standards for collaborative robots. But before these standards were written, P & G approached collaborative robot applications from the concept of safety first.

“How do we make sure that whatever we do with collaborative robots are going to be safe? Because, as it is with any new technology, you don't want to do anything early on that's going to give it a bad name or reputation; and if we had any incidents or anything that went on with a collaborative robot as we were trying to deploy this new technology into P&G, specifically, and into the robotics industry in general, then that was going to be a very difficult barrier to overcome if we had any incident,” Lewandowski told the Forum crowd.

He continued, “So, we've got to go in with a mindset of safety first, and I think as you look to deploy applications into your operations and into your sites, go in with that mindset. Make sure it's safety first, because this is a new technology. People are somewhat afraid of this technology, maybe, in some cases, and so you need to go in there with a concept; here's what we're doing to make these applications safe. And being able to show them what you're doing and how these applications are safe. So, go in with that concept of safety first.”

The best way to achieve this, said Lewandowski, is with a risk assessment. “Now, the first thing is follow the standards. There are guidelines and directives in the standards. In the US it's through the RIA 15.06, and the international standard is the ISO 10218, which are the robot safety standards. They're identical documents.

“It's risk assessment. It's risk analysis. Making sure that you understand what the hazards are in that application, and then what are the safeguards and things you could put in place to deal with each of those hazards that you identify? So, risk assessment is a key requirement, not only in all the robot safety standards, but in just about any safety standard that's been published out there for any type of machine,” said Lewandowski. “It's the concept of risk assessment. That is the key requirement to make sure that you develop a safe application. You cannot have robots and humans working together if you don't do a complete, comprehensive risk assessment. And it's not just the robot, and that's one of the things I think is one of the biggest issues that we deal with when people are first looking at collaborative robots, is they hear ‘we have this safe, collaborative robot.’

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