Don’t Let Low Lot Sizes Keep Your Shop from Automating

Conventional thinking might have you believe automation is only cost-effective for high-volume production. However, nothing could be further from the truth thanks to today’s automation that provides the ease of use, versatility and cost-effectiveness shops in high-mix/low-volume production environments need.

As a shop owner who might be on the fence about automation, you’re all too aware that finding, hiring and retaining skilled labor is an increasingly difficult task. Automation is the solution to that challenge. An investment in basic automation is worthwhile since it allows machines to run uninterrupted. Shops can increase profitably without additional wages, benefits and lost time to sick days and vacation. In fact, incorporating the right automation solution for high-mix/low-volume applications brings significant strategic advantages in terms of production optimization, flexibility, efficiency and market competitiveness.

If your machines aren’t cutting parts, you aren’t making money. Downtime is every shop’s enemy, and any solution that minimizes machine idle time, speeds production and opens the door for unattended operation improves your bottom line. Mazak’s Ez LOADER is just such a solution.

The Ez LOADER is an affordable, user-friendly collaborative robot (cobot) solution that is particularly suited to meet the challenges high-mix/low-volume production shops face daily. With a small footprint and operating envelope, Ez LOADER uses a robot arm, vision sensor and intuitive software to automatically load and unload parts to and from a machine tool.

Available in two maximum payload configurations – 22 lbs and 46 lbs – Ez LOADER is easy to set up and program. Plus, you don’t have to be a robotics engineer with Ez LOADER because teaching the cobot doesn’t require sophisticated programming knowledge.

Operators simply answer questions such as part size and shape along with the lot size in a conversational interface, then drag and drop icons into a timeline on a teach pendant. The software then calculates the robot’s path along with loading and unloading sequences.

The agility to quickly switch from one job to the next is the key to success when it comes to high-mix/low-volume production, and the Ez LOADER delivers, allowing you to roll it from one machine to the next as the work dictates. With this capability, you also spread the initial investment costs across many jobs while driving down overall cost per part and increasing profit margins.

In addition to the Ez LOADER, automation solutions can be as simple as a bar feeder and parts catcher or as complex as a completely unmanned palletized system. Whatever your production environment, Mazak has an automation solution for machining centers, turning centers and peripheral equipment that will help you do it better and more profitably.

The time is now. Don’t wait. Automate.