Autor: Oliver Scholtz

In human-robot collaboration (HRC), in which the employee works next to the robot - as is often the case in the previously purely manual assembly - the cost effectiveness of HRC application is often difficult to represent. Therefore, in the design of HRC applications, the focus in the first planning phase is on ensuring economic efficiency. In the ROKOKO research project, the involved partners developed a simple method for estimating the required total investment. The planning of a HRC application case at the company Metabowerke GmbH using the new method is the subject of this article.

The trend of shifting abroad personnel-intensive mounting from Germany to foreign countries continues. The assembly systems widely differ in investment demand and in output. Since the sales figures can hardly be reliably forecasted any more, it is a necessity to construct extreme flexible systems which can be exchanged by more economical solutions, even when the production has already started and we know reliable sales figures and more reliable prognoses.