Industrial Automation Magazine India

Robots are used in nearly all stages of an electronics manufacturing process

Published on : Monday 05-06-2023

Frank Thomas, Associate Senior Consultant, ARC Advisory Group, Europe.

What is the present status of sector wise robots penetration in India? What are the segments that are witnessing increased demand?
New robot installations in India have seen a significant increase of over 50 percent in robot units from 2020 to 2021; whereas the worldwide growth of robot installations from 2020 to 2021 has been 31 percent. According to the World Robotics report, presented by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), India now ranks at the 10th position in terms of annual robot installations. The segments that are witnessing increased demand are electronics, automotive, and the metals and machinery segments, e.g., plastics and rubber machineries with integrated robots. The automotive industry remains the largest customer for the robotics industry in India with a share of 31 percent in 2021. It is interesting to note that in 2020 the electronics manufacturing segment globally surpassed the robot installations of the automotive industry. 
 
Traditionally the automotive industry has been the main user of industrial robots. How will the electrification of mobility impact this dominance?
The trend to e-mobility in the automotive industry results in a substitution of drive train assembly lines through battery manufacturing production. Battery production needs highly precise and fast moving robots. There are numerous applications in battery manufacturing which are handled by robots. But such battery production lines are not necessarily established at e-car manufacturers. Many Giga-factories are and will be built by specialised companies serving the automotive segment. India has no local source of Lithium and either has to import complete mounted batteries or import Li-ion cells to locally package and assemble them. To boost local battery assembly, the Ministry of Heavy Industries of the Indian Government has released a production linked incentive (PLI) scheme in October 2021 for Advanced Chemical Cell (ACC) battery storage and the bids were opened inJanuary 2022.

The Covid pandemic struck a blow for digital transformation. Has this led to increased demand for robotic automation?
One should not overstate the impact of Covid. Digitalisation (IIoT/Industry 4.0) is the major driver of improving the OEE of production equipment. Robots help lower the costs. Covid has led to lack of workforce and thus has also fueled decision processes to invest in robots, but the digitalisation trend itself is the key driver.

Having said that, I’d like to state that the Covid pandemic accelerated robotic applications in the healthcare sector. During the pandemic, hospitals and clinics began using robots for a broader range of tasks to help reduce exposure to the infection. It is evident that the operational efficiencies and risk reduction provided by health robotics add value in a variety of ways. Robotic applications are of immense importance in such situations as they replicate human actions in hazardous environments, thereby minimising personal contact. Most countries deployed various robots to assist human staff because of the increase in deaths among frontline workers. With the adoption of robots in sectors like healthcare and its ancillary fields, the application and capabilities of robots are improving. Today, robots are used for surgeries, clinical training, medicine dispensing, personal care, and many others.

How is the entry of cobots and AMRs/AGVs changing the overall scenario of robotic automation in the manufacturing industry?
We need to look at 3 different processes:
a) Manufacturing of high volume per type calling for repetitive production steps.

b) Manufacturing of low volume/individualised products (down to lot sizes of 1 in the extreme case but with thousands of variants) calling for highly flexible cobots. 

c)  Before and after the manufacturing process there is the intralogistics segment.

AGVs in the past have been mostly used in logistics applications. AGVs can be now equipped with cobots and expand the applications of AGVs. An example is the transportation of yarn bobbins in the textile manufacturing industry. So far the yarn bobbins were loaded to textile machines manually. With an integrated AGV/cobot solution this can be fully automated, from the pick-up of the bobbins at the bobbin storage, transportation to the machine and finally loading the bobbins to the textile machine. 

AMRs are autonomous and do not follow firm paths like AGVs. This opens more opportunities for new applications not only related to intralogistics but also assembly applications. The use of AMR-cobots gets more interesting with the increase of payloads of cobots. The automation of flexible lower volume/higher variants product manufacturing processes gains momentum given the automated teach-in functions and lower costs of cobots compared to traditional robots. Both the AGV-cobots as well as the AMR-cobots increase the demand for vision systems and AI software.

While robots are gaining in versatility with integration of machine vision and greater use of AI/ML capabilities, is there a supporting infrastructure in terms of skills and system integrators?
This is by far a large bottleneck. In the past the robot business has been a product business with high volumes on very well-known applications. With cobots, a large number of new applications in more flexible lower volume/higher mix production is evolving and the increased use of digitalisation software including vision systems and AI. The robot business requires a system/solution business around very individual applications. Much more consulting is needed to understand the new applications and prepare the right choice of robots best matching to the individual needs of the end users.

End users also often prefer to leverage the expertise of local system integrators. The transition from a product business to a solution business is ongoing but will take a considerable amount of time to be globally available and supported, also due to the lack of experts.

Will the recent emphasis on manufacturing incentives for the electronics industry via PLI schemes lead to greater demand for robotic solutions? 
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology of the Government of India has identified the need to establish large-scale electronics manufacturing in India and started in 2020 a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme to support this sector. The objective is to boost domestic manufacturing and attract large investments in mobile phone manufacturing and specified electronic components, including Assembly, Testing, and Marking and Packaging (ATMP) units. 

Robots are used in nearly all stages of an electronics manufacturing process. As mentioned earlier, the number of installations of robots in the electronic manufacturing sector has surpassed the number of installations in the automotive industry in 2020. Electronics manufacturing includes many applications  for robots to increase productivity, quality and also worker safety, e.g., in circuit board testing, in AI based quality control and final electronic device assembly. The PLI Scheme definitely boosts the electronics manufacturing landscape and will establish India at the global level in the electronics sector. 

(The views expressed in interviews are personal, not necessarily of the organisations represented)

Frank Thomas supports ARC clients with technology and strategic research and consulting services to help them face today’s challenges and develop successful operations. He has known and worked with ARC for over 20 years.  His focus areas include industrial management and strategy in the field of machinery and production automation. Prior to joining ARC, he was Vice President of Automation in three different machinery companies, served as Managing Director of EBERLE Automation and successors, as Vice President of Strategy at the motion control business of Siemens as well as Manager of Strategy at Wittenstein.