Autor: Peter Rally

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 reduction in staff (production jobs) in Germany must lead to new concepts. It must be possible to built economic production at the “location D”. This can be new offers for customers, how it is possible with more individualizing products, which can be manufactured with reasonable delivery times only near the customer. Or the upgrading of products by linkage with services, how e.g. some service models try it. All these new offers require however a high flexibility of the enterprises, which can be mastered only with an adequate work organization. In the following some methods and ideas are described, how a flexible work organization from the requirements of a customer-integrated assembly can be arranged.