The transcript below is available for those who prefer to read along. Please be aware that it may contain minor errors. 

Christine McQuilkin:
Hi, can you introduce yourself, your name, title, and company?

Ben Kurth:
Hi Christine. Thanks for having me. My name is Ben Kurth. I’m the director of engineering at Applied Manufacturing Technologies where we design custom automated solutions for not only the manufacturing and warehousing and logistics space, but anywhere from auto to aerospace.

Christine McQuilkin:
That’s great. So let’s jump into for our topic of the day, cobot palletizing: making it easier, safer, and faster faster workflows. Let’s talk about the technology and capabilities. What are the key advantages of using collaborative robots for palletizing compared to traditional automation?

Ben Kurth:
Yeah, one of the first things that comes to mind is floor space where a large palletizing robot takes a whole bunch of fence and safe distance to stop the robot. A lot of manufacturers don’t have that kind of floor space. I was at a facility two days ago in New York where they had people moving all over the place, 10, 11 different lines producing product, and you couldn’t put a large palletizing system in this building. When you talk about a cobot palletizer, you don’t need fences in most situations, and that drastically minimizes the footprint. The other big thing about cobot palletizers is you can easily pick them up and move them from one line to the other. So in the event that you are moving or you’re not producing line one, but you’re producing on line two, I can just pick that robot up and move it to the other line, touch up one point, and you’re off to the races.

Christine McQuilkin:
Okay. Well, talking about AMT’s cobot palletizer specifically, how does it handle adding new palletizing patterns, box sizes, and product variations as you just mentioned, you can move it to another line.

Ben Kurth:
Yeah, so the, I’ll say secret sauce here is AMT’s custom developed user interface UI. We spent a lot of time analyzing the marketplace as well as our own backgrounds, and our team has over 30 years combined experience packaging and palletizing. So putting all of that to use and developing our custom UI, at the end of the day, it’s about ease of use for the customer, and we kept that at the forefront when we were designing the system. So users have the ability to create new patterns on their own. You don’t need to call us and schedule us to come into your facility. You can just do it on your own. That right there is one of the biggest things that allows us to get into some facilities.

Christine McQuilkin:
When you’re talking about the cobot palletizer that AMT has designed, can you tell me what robot it uses?

Ben Kurth:
Yeah, so we use a FANUC CRX Series 30iA cobot, which means it is a 30 kilogram payload robot. The idea behind that is we wanted to go with one of the largest manufacturers in the world for robotics, and we at AMT are a Level 5 systems integrator with FANUC, which is, I don’t know if you know this, but the highest level that you can get to outside of the GMs of the world.

Christine McQuilkin:
Wonderful. What types of sensors and safety features allow cobots to work alongside humans without the fencing that you were discussing earlier?

Ben Kurth:
The FANUC robot uses sensors in each joint to monitor the force feedback and amperage draw on each motor, which allows it to know when it’s contacting something outside of the limits and parameters that you have set. When you talk about collaborative robots, there are four types of collaborative robots, force and power limiting, which is the one that we use a speed and separation is number two. Number three, hand guiding, and number four, a safety rated stop. When people hear the term cobot or collaborative robot, they think, like you had mentioned in the question, I can work right next to a robot and it will stop when it contacts me. That type of collaborative robot is the first one that I mentioned, which is the power and force limiting where the robot is monitoring the forces on the arm itself.

Christine McQuilkin:
Thank you for that. How does a cobot palletizer connect with existing warehouse management or manufacturing execution systems?

Ben Kurth:
Yeah, so this again goes back to, I mentioned when AMT developed the user interface. We have 30 plus years of custom automation and providing turnkey solutions to end users. So we’ve spent a great deal of time communicating to warehouse management systems, plant networks, and we’ve brought that into this system. We know that not all warehouse management systems are a one size fits all, so we tailor the solution to meet your needs.

Christine McQuilkin:
Great. Are there any industries or specific applications that benefit most from cobot palletizing solutions?

Ben Kurth:
Yeah, I mean, when you talk about cobot palletizing solutions, the first couple that jump out is the warehousing and logistics space, the food and beverage space, pharmaceuticals to some degree. Anything that’s really stacking or moving product from all day long. A lot of times cobots are now being used in other areas as well as far as machine tending or you think about even you’re starting to see them in some welding applications, which is pretty interesting. So we have the cobot palletizing solution, but we’re definitely finding more and more use case for a cobot in general.

Christine McQuilkin:
That’s interesting. Changing gears here to talk more about efficiency and ROI. How does cobot palletizing impact labor costs and overall production efficiency?

Ben Kurth:
So I guess, let me gear this towards a plant specifically, right. Have you ever heard of a workplace injury, someone moving a heavy box outside of a ergo position above their head, below their waist? What’s the cost of taking care of that employee? The great thing about a robot is that it’s going to do all of those non-ergonomic tasks, those repetitious tasks, and palletizing is a great one. So when you talk about saving labor cost or overall production efficiency, if you don’t have a body there because either they’re hurt or it’s again a repetitious task than putting a robot in that position, not only are you saving on the labor costs there, but you’re able to produce product when a person isn’t even there, right. So we’re seeing those come into the ROI calculation.

Christine McQuilkin:
Yeah, that’s important to prevent those workplace injuries. What’s the typical ROI timeline for companies who are adopting this type of technology?

Ben Kurth:
So the typical ROI is, again, if you think about two employees building pallets seven days a week, again, I was just at a facility earlier this week where we figured out the ROI on this system that we developed to be a year or under, depending on you replace all the employees or not. Again, go back to what we just talked about, right. The ROI isn’t necessarily just about headcount reduction. You have to take into account the ability to keep your plant producing and again, what’s the ROI on that, right?

Christine McQuilkin:
Downtime is quite expensive and you hear a lot of talk about how difficult it is even to find enough labor. So we’re not talking about reducing headcount necessarily. As you mentioned, we just want to keep our plant producing moving. Yeah, what’s the cost per hour when you can’t produce at all? Because the people don’t show up…

Ben Kurth:
Exactly.

Christine McQuilkin:
Well looking the future, how do you see cobot palletizing evolving in say, the next five years?

Ben Kurth:
So cobots in general are still new technology, so a lot of people might think, is it really safe? Will it really stop when it hits somebody? How hard does it hit? All of these questions are in not only integrator’s minds, but also safety officer’s minds and ultimately, rightfully so. I think the more cobots that start to flood the industry, the more people get used to seeing them and understanding what they are capable of. Right now, like I just mentioned, that’s a hard concept for a lot of people because they haven’t seen them before and they just don’t know. Again, think about robots of the past. They’re big, they’re in cages, you’re not allowed to be around them or touch them. It’s okay, they’re in a cage. I have to stay away. Now we’re starting to break that barrier, and I think once we start to understand that level and once plants and people start to understand it, ultimately the sky’s the limit. Really.

Secondarily, it was over at FANUC about a month ago, and one of the employees over there told me that they estimate that in three to five years, the CRX collaborative robot will be their highest selling unit that they have, which off the cuff doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but they’ve been selling the R-2000 series for the last 20, 30, 40 years, and they sell it by the hundreds to the automotive manufacturers. So it was staggering to me to hear that they’re estimating that the CRX is going to be one of their highest selling units.

Christine McQuilkin:
There’ll be some quicker adoption, I think going forward, it sounds like.

Ben Kurth:
Exactly.

Christine McQuilkin:
Yeah, collaborative robotics. I know that industrial automation isn’t on the cutting edge of adopting new technology typically, but this is going to enable plants, as you said, to keep working despite labor shortages. So it sounds like it’s going to really be an industry game changer for production.

Ben Kurth:
Definitely. I definitely think so.

Christine McQuilkin:
I had the privilege of a plant tour over at FANUC near the AMT headquarters and what a place that is!

Ben Kurth:
Yeah, it’s pretty fun to go and walk through there. If you’re interested or if any of the listeners are interested, make sure you reach out to me on LinkedIn. My name is Ben. I think on LinkedIn actually, it’s Ben Benjamin Kurth. Again, I work at Applied Manufacturing Technologies. Stop in, say hi. Send me an email, send me a message, and FANUC is definitely a great place to go and see, and we’ll make sure we get you a tour over there.

Christine McQuilkin:
That’s awesome. And Kurth, it’s K-U-R-T-H for our listeners?

Ben Kurth:
That’s correct. Thank you.

Christine McQuilkin:
Thank you so much for having the chat with me today about these interesting palletizing robots. It’ll be great to see in the future how quick the adoption is and how much that they can improve the efficiency of the manufacturing in our fine country.

Ben Kurth:
Yeah. Thanks Christine, I really appreciate it.