AÂ Mount Vernon manufacturer is bringing production back home and making his small business more competitive in the global marketplace with the adoption this year of a pioneering technology developed by a Danish robotics company.
At Bridge Metal Industries, a contract manufacturer of advertising and retail display lighting at 717 S. 3rd Ave., collaborative robots are working beside human employees on metal presses and in packaging and powder coating operations. Co-owner Robert Blanchard has bought eight of the new breed of industrial robots ”” lightweight, portable, six-jointed mechanical arms operated by a computer program ”” from Universal Robots, a 10-year-old company headquartered in Odense, Denmark. By next June he expects to employ 20 of the “cobots” ”” a term coined by Universal Robots executives ”” in the approximately 82,000-square-foot plant to which Bridge Metal Industries relocated from the Bronx 10 years ago.
On a recent weekday, Bridge Metal machine operator Victor Peralta supervised the work of two temporary workers employed at the factory through a federally subsidized job placement program for developmentally disabled people at AHRC New York City. The men watched the automated tools repetitively insert and remove flat metal sheets from the presses and occasionally punched a button on a touchscreen tablet to halt a robot while they sorted and stacked finished shelving for a L”™Oreal cosmetics retail display.
“I like doing the robots,” said AHRC employee John Adorno, watching his automated partner at a brake press. Adorno needed only one week of training for the job.
The collaborative robots have benefited AHRC and the developmentally disabled who work in its community employment program, said Peter Tomasi, assistant director of vocational services at AHRC New York City. While the nonprofit services agency has performed contract work for Bridge Metal at AHRC”™s Bronx facility, the robotic workplace additions brought the temporary employees to work on-site in Mount Vernon.
“It”™s changed now with robotics,” Tomasi said. “It gives access to jobs that people with developmental disabilities didn”™t have access to. It”™s opened up employment opportunities in the community.”
The pioneering workplace project at Bridge Metal “is a nice marriage of a flexible tool in a robot and a flexible workforce in the people that we”™re providing and we”™re training,” said Tomasi. “Our guys are working with it comfortably after three or four days.”
Mette McCall, a spokesperson for Universal Robots, said collaborative robots are “a new dramatic departure from traditional industrial robots,” which are heavy and stationary, expensive, difficult to program, and require safety cages when operating. The three aluminum and plastic collaborative robot models marketed by the Danish company weigh from 24 to 64 pounds and range in price from the mid-$20,000s to the mid-$40,000s. They also are programmed to stop in their tracks when a human worker gets too close.
“These kinds of robots are addressing a whole different segment of industry, which are the small and medium-sized businesses,” said Daniel Friis, chief commercial officer of Universal Robots, during a visit to the Mount Vernon factory.
With 84 employees, Bridge Metal Industries is one of those businesses that could be changed by this evolved robotics technology. “When you are a contract manufacturer with high mix, low volume,” said McCall, “that”™s where you need a robot like this.”
Customized manufacturing and small production runs are a trend in manufacturing today, said Cynthia Kradjel, a New Rochelle resident and area sales manager for Universal Robots, which in 2012 opened a U.S. subsidiary based in East Setauket. “With our tools, it makes businesses more competitive again in customized, small runs.”
Kradjel said she is seeing high demand for Universal”™s robots among medical device manufacturers. Friis said the robots are being put to new uses across a range of industries, “from medical to food to metal industries like here. There”™s a huge, wide variety.”
Friis said the robotic arms have been purchased by private hospitals to help patients perform physical exercises when rehabilitating from knee surgery, for example. “It”™s all kind of small niches that you can actually use the robot to work,” he said.
“Everybody”™s trying to do this now,” McCall said of competing technology companies. But as the first maker of collaborative robots, Universal Robots has an advantage over its competitors and holds an approximately 60 percent market share, she said.
Launched on the market in Denmark and Germany in 2009, “It”™s basically everywhere” around the world now, Friis said. He said about half of the company”™s sales are in Europe, while the American and Asian markets each account for about one-fourth of sales.
“China is exploding” as a market for collaborative robotics, Friis said. To serve its growing Asian market, Universal Robots has offices in Shanghai and Singapore and recently opened its first Indian office in Bangalore. The company also has a second U.S. office in the high-tech Mecca of the Midwest, Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Danish company”™s performance with its pioneering product in a booming market for robotics was recognized by Teradyne Inc., the supplier of automated test equipment for electronic devices headquartered in North Reading, Mass. In June Teradyne paid $285 million to acquire Universal Robots and agreed to pay an additional $65 million through 2018 if performance targets are met.
Teradyne officials when announcing the deal said collaborative robotics is a $100 million segment of the industrial robotics market and growing at more than 50 percent annually. Universal Robots reported more than $38 million in revenue in 2014, a 70 percent jump from the previous year that was accompanied by doubled profits.
At Bridge Metal Industries, adding the collaborative robots to the manufacturing process “has totally changed the scope of the business,” Blanchard said. “We can be more competitive. We can bring back work that we were outsourcing.”
He said the workplace robots are not designed to replace human workers but instead could increase employment at manufacturers like Bridge Metal and related industries such as trucking and warehousing.
“We don”™t lose employees,” Blanchard said, “but we gain the ability for employees to operate more than one thing at one time in a safe and efficient manner.” One employee can operate two or three robotically manned machines simultaneously, he said. “It takes the pressure off the employees psychologically.”
“In the same eight-hour day, we can produce much more” and sell products at lower, more competitive prices, Blanchard said. “It used to be, to be competitive with China, you had to have a lot of products. This new collaborative robot has changed the landscape for small and medium businesses.”
“For the handicapped, it”™s an incredible thing,” Blanchard said. “We can integrate the handicapped person to the robot. Here you just arm one person with a robot, train him, and it”™s for a lifetime. ”¦From the handicapped person”™s point of view, the self-esteem level is huge.”
At AHRC New York City, “We”™re excited to be associated with it,” Tomasi said of the collaborative robotics project. “It”™s got tremendous implications for our business.”
