Robots Archives - AfricaBusiness.com

30May

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Business, Tech, Uganda News

Palletising Robots: Changing How Breweries Stack and Pack

Robotic automation enables remote support possibilities that significantly reduce downtime and address geographical constraints, says Yaskawa Southern Africa Managing Director, Andrew Crackett. Conventional palletisers have been around for over 50 years. While they continue to be operational in many factories around the world, their modern counterparts – robotic palletisers – are solving issues that seemed impossible before. Whether it’s the need to conserve floorspace or to make workplaces safer and better regulated, robotic automation has numerous benefits that other technologies struggle to match in the long run. One of the most appealing factors is that it actually pushes factories towards a more innovative and forward-thinking future. At times, this doesn’t even require everyone to ...

11May

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Tech

Robots in the Workforce: No, the Machines Aren’t Taking Over

Robots aren’t here to replace humans, but to create a human-machine collaborative model for a more efficient and productive way of operating, says Yaskawa Southern Africa’s Managing Director, Andrew Crackett. Ever since robots were introduced in the science fiction genre, there’s been a fear that machines will take over and that soon, the days of humans being at the top of the food chain will be gone. The fear mongering has persisted with notions of robots overthrowing the workforce and humans being enslaved to the almighty lords of automation and binary code. Even though it's true that many industries have embraced robotics, the reality is far removed from the plot of a Philip K. Dick novel. Much like every industrial revolution before it, the fourth revolution ensures changes in how we w...

20Jan

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

South Africa News, Tech

The Role Of Painting Robots

For a long time, the most common form of industrial painting required the use of human specialist coating teams, and typically, these jobs included the painting of warehouses, machinery or automobiles. It is a large-scale process that demands high levels of safety measures and protective gear and is prone to errors that waste resources, time, and money. Today, advancements in the world of industrial robotic solutions have paved the way for painting robots. These sophisticated machines offer large-scale manufacturing operations, a customised automation solution that boasts precision, efficiency, programmability, and safety, particularly in the automotive industry. Globally, the implementation of painting robots is well-established and still steadily growing. In South Africa, we have seen t...

Organic wholesaler doubles output with AutoStore empowered by Swisslog

5Jan

By Africa BusinessNo Comments

Tech

Organic wholesaler doubles output with AutoStore empowered by Swisslog

The leading wholesaler in the Swiss organic market, Bio Partner, has doubled its output following the implementation of innovative robotic logistics from Swisslog at its facility in Aargau, Switzerland. Bio Partner supplies business customers in the organic specialist trade as well as the rest of the retail and food industry from its location in Seon. As a result of the merger with Somona GmbH, the warehouse reached its performance and capacity limits, and the wholesaler turned to a local partner with a global footprint to deliver an automated storage system. The 12,200m2 warehouse handles 10,000+ products, a process now optimized thanks to the high-performance AutoStore storage solution, delivered by global warehouse automation specialist, Swisslog, a member of the KUKA group. "Companies...

15Sep

By Yaskawa Southern AfricaNo Comments

South Africa News, Tech

The Role Of Pick And Place Robots

In years gone by, manufacturing processes consisted of a line of workers being solely responsible for all the material-handling functions. Whether it was assembly, picking or packaging, it was largely a manual, laborious process. The detrimental effects to the workers’ health have been well documented in the history books, as many employees were subjected to conditions that sometimes resulted in serious illness, injury, and even death. As automation became widely accepted and implemented throughout various industries, robotics took it one step further with robots designed for specific applications, such as handling, packaging and palletising. Suddenly, these new pick and place robots allowed for more speed and consistency in throughput, while being customisable to meet production requir...