Visitors to Universal Robots’ stand will get a hands-on experience of our cobots and technologies from some of our UR+ partners. Users can simply walk up to one of our cobots, grab a touchscreen and within two minutes they will have mastered their first robot move. We want our visitors to get a practical understanding of how the cobots work and just how easy they are to operate.
As well as this, you can be introduced to our new flagship e-Series line of collaborative robot arms, as part of our mission to bring the benefits of automation to companies of all sizes, in all industries. The new e-Series builds on the original cobot, with six articulation points and a wide scope of flexibility. Designed to mimic the range of motion of a human arm, the e-Series enables faster development for a wider variety of applications and meets the very latest ISO safety standards.
Come and have a chat with us at the event and we can tell you about our newest UK case study – B-Loony! If you can’t wait till then, you can find a snippet of the story below.
B-Loony Ltd, is a UK SME manufacturer of bespoke promotional products such as burger flags, bunting and balloons. By deploying five UR3 cobots it has been able to continue manufacturing in the UK and to be highly responsive to customer demands, all while remaining competitive and growing its market share.
Evolving market demands and rising labour costs meant B-Loony needed to significantly increase productivity and efficiency, in order to remain competitive in both the UK market and abroad. Strong demand and short lead times for specific products lines also left B-Loony under pressure to come up with a solution that would allow employees to be more efficient and to be more reactive to customer needs. As each job is highly customised, with quantities ranging from as little as 250 up to 2 million products per order, flexibility and scalability was also of the utmost importance.
Cobot Colleagues
Operations Director James Clephan visited a manufacturing exhibition where he first encountered cobots. “All our products are customised and we don’t have the luxury of unlimited space in our production facility, so incorporating industrial robots, caging or safety guarding is difficult. However, I could instantly picture how the cobots would slot seamlessly into our operations.”
Starting out with one UR3 cobot and quickly purchasing five more, B-Loony has deployed the cobots to do a range of tasks that human operators previously carried out by hand. These employees now work closely alongside and supervise up to four cobots at a time, carrying out tasks such as blowing up balloons, sewing bunting together and assembling food-flags. The cobots can handle the most routine and repetitive elements of these tasks, freeing up staff to focus on higher value activities such as quality control.
Staff acceptance was extremely important for B-Loony and was a key factor in selecting the cobot over alternative technologies. Universal Robots’ safety features mean the B-Loony team is very comfortable working alongside the cobots as even the slightest bump against the robot will stop the whole system instantly. As team leader Magda Okon puts it, “I love working with the cobots, they’re like my third hand!”
Flexible Automation Yields Great Results
The ease and flexibility of the cobots visibly boosted productivity at the factory, allowing B-Loony to increase output and cut the average cost of each item produced. Another unanticipated benefit of the cobots has been the ability to redeploy them at short notice when circumstances change. For example, the product line the cobots were initially brought in for was discontinued. Yet the company was able to simply re-programme the cobots and have them up and running elsewhere, future-proofing the investment.
B-Loony is now producing a staggering 1,200 miles of bunting each year, a distance equivalent of London to Casablanca. Furthermore, it has increased output of its highly popular gourmet food flags by over 5000%, from 250 thousand to 15 million per annum, significantly increasing its market share. This increased productivity has resulted in B-Loony achieving a payback period of just nine months for its initial cobot investments. Through economies of scale it anticipates payback for future projects to be brought down further to just six months.
Interested in finding out more? You can view the full case story here. 
