Thinking Outside the Robotics Cell

Although historically difficult to automate due to varying product types and small, inconsistent batch quantities, kitting has become one of the more intriguing examples of how robots are extending their reach, said Greg Berguig, president at PAC Machinery. PAC has partnered with MSD Sales to integrate its Rollbag automatic baggers with MSD’s KitAmatic system—a vision-guided solution that replaces manual, multi-part assembly. The KitAmatic combines a circular flexible feeder with a 6-axis robot that picks, inspects, and places disparate parts into bags.

“It’s a rotary table and a robotic arm that uses vision to pick the correct items and put them into a bag that it seals,” Berguig explained. “Where we see robotics really playing a bigger role is in our bagging lines—putting something into a bag, sealing that bag, and then labeling it. Most kitting applications can’t run for five minutes without a changeover, but robotic arms do a nice job when you have small batch runs and you’re changing kit counts frequently.”

Changeovers, he added, are an easy transition with this setup, which is built for accuracy rather than raw speed—a tradeoff he said is increasingly common as shipments become more specialized. Berguig also pointed to warehouse logistics and outbound mailing as areas worth investing in.

Another emerging area is e-commerce logistics and outbound shipping. With a robot and advanced vision, changeover is usually just software-based and extremely short, further improving the ROI,” he said.

Pairing robotic arms with automatic baggers has also been a strong way for customers to increase output while reducing labor costs, Berguig said. “They’re able to set up systems to run without operator intervention, which allows packaging to be done outside of regular shifts and increases output,” he said. While a robot may not bag as fast as a human, it reduces the error rate—and serves as a strong alternative to other feeding systems such as bowl feeders and weigh scales when packaging the same item repeatedly.

When it comes to cobots, Goldberg sees palletizing as the most rapidly expanding application because of their effectiveness at slower speeds. 

“Cobots are not necessarily fast enough to do a lot of the industrial pick-and-place that you’d see at the front end of secondary or primary packaging operations,” he said. “On the palletizer, the cobot can move up to roughly 2,000 millimeters per second. It’s a great solution when trying to reduce labor dependency.”

ABB Robotics’ PoWa cobot lowers the barrier to automation for both SMEs and large enterprises.ABBAs Ben Perlson, director of consumer industries at ABB Robotics, sees it, the most successful OEM robotics applications aren’t the most glamorous—they’re the most predictable. 

“The more advanced, forward-looking OEMs are embedding robotics directly into their standard machine offerings rather than treating them as bolt-ons,” he said. “Customers get a productized system from a single supplier with validated cycle times and unified controls. That turns what used to be a multi-vendor juggling exercise into a cohesive, repeatable product.”

Sense of safety and investment return

Despite the technological gains, Sego believes safety and operator training will remain significant challenges as the industrial robotics footprint grows.

“If you’re going to invest in robotics, you have to invest in your people to be able to maintain it,” he said. “I can build the best robot on the planet, but if your maintenance staff doesn’t know how to interface with it or recover when there are potential issues, it’s going to be a significant uphill battle.”

Robot suppliers, he added, owe end users a level of foolproof fail-safes.

“We’re always going to have to think about the staff member who’s never seen this before and walks onto the floor with no training,” he said. CRG’s case packers and other systems are being designed with that in mind.

“We chose a robotic solution because it’s more cost-effective and faster to deliver,” Sego said. “Designing a fully mechanical system takes significantly more time than mounting a robot, developing the end effector, and teaching the motion. End users can be trained to interact with the robot and resolve issues, rather than understand a custom one-off.

The technology itself is also progressing toward predictive action rather thanThis Fanuc robot features a CRG Automation-designed end-of-arm tool with a custom shroud that enables the picking of products with different sizes and weights.CRG Automation reaction, with machines helping to predict failures and diagnose potential issues with both robotic components and changing environments. At Rockwell Automation, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) connect integrators to robots and enable them to scale faster and at lower cost, said James C. Fadool, senior global OEM technical consultant. Helping push that technology forward are Rockwell’s Emulate3D digital-twin tool and the Logix Echo platform, a software-based controller emulator for ControlLogix 5580 and GuardLogix 5580 PLCs. 

“Without turning a wrench or picking up a screw, we can build an entire line, write all the program, and test it in real time on a single computer,” Fadool said. “The ability to do that at the machine builder level is just unmatched.”

Not the answer for everybody

That said, robotics won’t always deliver sufficient ROI, Perlson cautioned.

“Robotics is not a silver bullet for a broken or unstable process,” he said. “It tends to amplify whatever is already there, good or bad. If variability or poor upstream control exists, automation will highlight them quickly. Customers also often underestimate the operational readiness required. This is where strong OEMs differentiate themselves — by challenging assumptions early, aligning on realistic operating conditions, and preventing projects from slipping during execution.”

Going forward, Berguig anticipates that OEMs will need to encourage customers to pilot advancing robotic systems as machines evolve quickly.

“You’re not going to get anywhere without that,” he said. “If you’re not piloting these types of systems, you’re going to be very far behind. You’re not going to have any sense of what works well, what doesn’t, or what you need to do as an organization to understand this technology.”