The key to manufacturing during COVID-19
Summary
COVID-19 mitigation measures including mass lockdowns and a legal requirement for certain individuals to self-isolate mean that it is increasingly difficult for employers to forecast the availability of their workforce from one day to the next. While robots have been seen by some as a threat to jobs, opinions are now shifting and they are being seen as an enabler – a way to be able to manufacture (or perform other key supply chain tasks such as warehousing) with a substantially level cost base anywhere on the planet, keeping factories open in a world where that is becoming increasingly difficult. Supporting this approach, a study (Knight, 2013) by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that manufacturing processes are faster, more efficient and more cost-effective when there is co-operation between humans and robots. Absenteeism is a greater problem these days with some perfectly healthy people being bound by law to quarantine due to a chance contact and this, along with erratic supply chains, is making factory management an even more challenging task. When paired with a human worker as a tool and not as a replacement/threat, they allow social distancing to be achieved while the human/robot team delivers the flexibility, ingenuity, strength, precision and speed that world-class manufacturing operations require.