Robotics in the Automotive Industry

Ninety percent of robotics today are being put to work on assembly lines in

manufacturing products. The first industrial robot was installed 50 years ago in a production line.

Auto industry plant-floor is where robots do the majority of their work. Even though 90% of

today’s robots on the planet work in production lines, 50% of this robotics are working in

production lines in the automotive industry (Vulavala, 26). Due to the increase in demand for

this robotics, the sales of industrial robotics has increased by 23% in the previous years,

according to a study conducted by BGC. For this, the costs of these industrial robotics will

decrease by 16% (Young). This will lead to more and more car manufacturers converting to

industrial robotics for the purpose of manufacturing vehicles rather than depending on human

labor due to the low costs of the robotics. Also, the innovative technology in robotics allows for

the car manufacturer to create new and logical ways to quickly produce cars in an efficient

manner; as shown in the Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly Line Balancing

Problems.

Robotics are becoming more popular in the automotive industry due to their low costs,

both up front and in the long run. According to an article published by M2presswire, increasing

investments in the automotive industry is significantly driving growth in the industrial robotics

market, with the investments growing 22% on average per year. The day to day technological

advancements are helping the manufacturing process and other such tasks perform a lot faster

and cost effective (1). Also, according to a BCG (Boston Consulting Group) study, industrial

robot sales has increased by 23% since the previous few years. A recent report estimates that the

cost of using industrial robots will decrease by 16% by 2025. Robots are becoming cheaper to

build and purchase and are more agile than their human counterparts humans. According to a
Stanford University study, companies such as Boston-based Rethink Robotics are “Already

offering agile factory robots for as little as $25,000, which is equivalent to paying a full-time

human worker $4 an hour over the lifetime of the machine.” Being equivalent to the cost of a

human per hour, robotics is proving to be the more adequate and lucrative choice for companies

because they are becoming less expensive than humans and they produce quality products at an

efficient pace.

Using robotics in the assembly lines stimulates the innovation of new and different

methods to mass produce vehicles. According to an article by Mojtaba Aghajani, the need for

flexible production has increased, therefore the call for flexible assembly systems which is

played by robots has increased. As a response to this need, a two-sided assembly line is used to

produce large-sized and high-volume products; such as buses, cars, and trucks. Some tasks are

performed on the right side while other tasks are performed on the left side of the assembly line,

because it is parallel (1005). However, The Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly

Line Balancing Problems is an innovative method that has excelled the two-sided assembly line

model. The Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly Line Balancing Problems can

produce a certain type of product that must be simultaneously produced by using robots on a

station that work on opposite sides of the assembly line. The way this method works is that each

task has a predetermined set of relationships, however, the similarity of the robots allows them to

combine all of the tasks into one diagram. Unlike a one-sided assembly line, where the only

important factor is satisfaction of the precedence constraints that is crucial in the overall

assignment of several jobs in separate stations, two-sided lines share the same sequence of jobs

in each mated station. This a crucial segment for an organized assignment and should be thought

of. Jobs at opposite sides of the line can interfere with each other through priority constraints
which can cause a partial break time if a workstation needs to wait for a prior task to be

completed at the other end of the line. This is referred to as interference (1007). This robotics

find the ideal fit for all parts of car being manufactured. Because of this, as vehicles become

more complex due to innovations for its use, robots are depended on to lead minor and major

segments of assembly.

As robotics are more depended on manufacturing products, their effectiveness has

increased and so has the quality of the assembled product. This makes robots more effective at

producing excellent quality products. According to an article by D. B. Tuekel, production data

are stored and analyzed in order to define breakdowns and faults. A user-friendly man-machine

interface is developed on a standard operator panel (1041). This is primarily due to the fact that

the process for the assembly of a body of a car is complex; including: welding multiple

component parts, finish welding stations to connect the assembly, locating preliminary pre-

assembled component parts. A lot of care has to be used to ensure the greatness of the product’s

quality. Fixtures and the welding quality are most significant. The nut welding process uses

technology and robotics in manufacturing weld nuts (1042). This assembly process is made up of

advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs). AMTs include Computer-Aided Design (CAD),

robotics, Group Technology (GT), Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), automated material

handling systems, storage and retrieval systems, Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC)

machine tools, and barcoding or other automated identification techniques. AMTs are a

comprehensive collection of technologies for enhancing the efficiency and flexibility of

manufacturing systems (Khan, 2). This shows that the quality of today’s automotive products is

dependent on the technologies and systems used by the robotics in the assembly lines to meet the

high requirements of the consumers. Lastly, due to the need of automotive companies to keep up
with technology, “attractive” car parts are being assembled. In an article by Alina Parvu, the

automotive industry is facing nowadays the need to compete in the market in terms of quality,

cost and time related to the products which are offered. Vehicle design is developing more and

more (131). Through design optimization, lighter and easily manufactured mechatronic product

is obtained (132). Innovations like the rear-view camera, or sensors on the car’s sides to notify

the driver of surrounding vehicles, all make the assembly and manufacturing process a lot more

time consuming and difficult. However, with the use of the robotics, the obstacles are easily

overcome and the final product is of high quality.

However, as the use of robotics in assembly lines in the automotive industry rises,

humans will become unemployed, which will negatively impact the environment. A drastic

effect of unemployment occurred in Youngstown Ohio for a majority of the twentieth century.

The various steel mills in Youngstown granted a great success that the city truly represented the

American dream, discussing the average income of workers and one of the nation’s highest

homeownership rates. However, as raw materials were being processed and manufactured

elsewhere after World War II, the city of Youngstown decreased in productivity. In the span of a

few years, Youngstown was quickly diminished losing more than 50,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in

job wages. This dramatic decrease later created the term regional depression. This economic

shift later disrupted the city by a mental and social breakdown. Several factors including:

depression, spousal abuse, and suicide all became much more common. This caused the city’s

mental-health center to triple in size in a single decade. Due to this the city also constructed four

new prisons to keep up with amount of people committing crimes on a daily basis. The only

positive in the city was the construction of a museum that was dedicated to the erratic steel

industry that the economy depended on (Thompson). This shows that as jobs lay off their current
employees, then the society in which they live in will negatively be affected by it. Also, families

will become dysfunctional due to the loss of support from the jobs in which the parent or parents

fulfilled. This dysfunction disrupts the family and eventually causes problems, such as divorce

and depression. By laying off the current humans in the automotive industry, we are bound to

experience the same negative reaction in several cities across the United States and throughout

the world, because robotics is completing the same tasks as humans once did.

However, as a contradiction, robotics is actually improving the automotive industry.

According to an article by Matthew Rendall, “Robots aren’t stealing our jobs — they’re

improving them.” From 2000 to 2010 alone, 5.6 million jobs disappeared. Interestingly, though,

only 13% of those jobs were lost due to international trade. The vast remainder, 85% of job

losses, stemmed from “productivity growth” — another way of saying machines replacing

human workers. In the past two decades, the productivity of manufacturing in the U.S. has

adapted to inflation by around 40%, and yearly value by U.S. factories has also reached a high of

$2.4 trillion. Even though job availability has decreased, productivity has substantially increased.

Workers who are manufacturing products for export have a higher education, and are receiving a

higher wage while making profitable products. This also includes the technology that permits the

workers to be able to make these profitable products. Point of there are a few million jobs that

are not fulfilled due primarily to the aging workforce in the manufacturing industry— the

average age of a manufacturing worker is almost 45 years old. This shows that robotics is

actually improving the current jobs in the automotive industry. Due to the fact that robots are

safer, and more reliable than humans. They are more ethical than using exploited labor overseas.

Plus, they’re incredibly cost-effective, often delivering return on investment (ROI) in 12 months

or less. That is a game-changer in an industry relentlessly driven by cost reduction and plagued
by slow-drip evolution (Rendall). As the average age of the manufacturing workers increases,

more jobs are going unfulfilled. However, robotics is able to fulfill the jobs and can be exploited

as opposed to outsourcing the jobs overseas.

As a solution to this escalating problem, automotive companies should fully convert to

using and exploiting robotics to manufacture their vehicles. Robotics are shown to be more cost

effective than humans and can work strenuously for a continuous amount of time. Whereas

humans are not cost effective and must take breaks for personal reasons; such as vacation time,

sickness, paternal or maternal leave, and many other reasons. Also, using robotics is shown to

produce high quality products. Using the same types of robotics will not only allow them to

manufacture the vehicles quickly and efficiently, but it also allows them to interchange positions

in cases one robot malfunctions. The Type II Robotic Mixed-Model Two-Sided Assembly Line

Balancing Problems uses this to its advantage to mass produce products at a quick pace.

In conclusion, robotics must be used as the primary method to mass produce vehicles as

opposed to humans because they are a lot more beneficial to the company that they will work for

as opposed to humans. Although not all humans will be completely replaced by robots, the

humans that manage to keep their position in the automotive industry are bound to receive higher

pay as well as be more educated than the other humans that worked for less pay and didn’t have

as great of an education. For these reasons, robotics has proven to be significant in vehicle

production in the automotive industry.

Bibliography:

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