by Sarah Lippert

Created on: October 05, 2010

When Ford motor company started the concept of an assembly line, they were revolutionizing the auto industry by developing a method in which humans could do a repetitive task to maximize efficiency in constructing vehicles. Fast forward to 2010 and the auto industry is trying to avoid having humans do any of those tasks at all. With ever increasing labor costs and a customer base that demands constant improvement auto companies are doing everything that they can to automate every process possible. What once took a human 15 minutes to complete is now flawlessly and consistently done by a robot in only about a minute. 

Robots have become the norm on the plant floor of auto manufacturing plants and the plants of all of their suppliers. In fact it is very common to see car commercials now featuring video of their robots at work. Modern cars have become incredible pieces of technology but the robots that put them together are even more amazing. 

The most common use of robots in auto manufacturing is in the welding processes. There are literally thousands of spot welds that go into a car and quite a few arc welds as well. For those who are not welding engineers, a spot weld is essentially made by running very high electric current through overlapping pieces of metal in which the resistance creates enough heat to fuse them together. The equipment used to make a spot weld is relatively basic but is quite bulky and for a human to make the spot welds would require a lot of manual labor in moving either a part or the welder itself. Spot welders are quite heavy because they are mostly copper and quite cumbersome to handle. Robots are capable of carrying an entire spot welder and placing it in the same spot with near perfect repeatability. This repeatability is also crucial in making arc welds which are reserved for the more heavy duty components in a vehicle. In fact the integrity of the welds is one of the biggest driver behind the application of robots toward welding. As a consumer you'd be happy to know that carmakers run a lot of sample tests on welded parts to check for strength and you'd be happier to know that these samples reflect the strength of each car coming off the assembly line because the robot that welds them puts the weld in the same place on every car.

Another common use of robots is the application of paint, which is why the paint quality of the cars on a dealer lot is so consistent. Painting robots work very similar to the welding robots in that they put the paint in the same place on every car and can do the work in much less time than even the most skilled human being. 

Robots are being used more and more for material handling applications as well and will continue to find more and more uses in the automotive industry due to the ever increasing demand for high quality vehicles at lower costs. In fact the industry of robot manufacturing is ever growing as more and more companies vie for dominance in the market of automation. Much like car companies competing for who has the fastest car on road, robot companies are competing for who has the fastest and the most reliable robot in the factory. 

The auto industry has learned how to use robots to make themselves competitive and more profitable and other industries are starting to do the same thing. In the competitive global marketplace I'd look for robots to really start propagating in other industries as time goes on. Future advice by this writer: Instead of learning to do factory work, learn to work on a robot.

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