Replacing human hands for the manufacturing industry

November 13, 2018 4:56 pm

“Robots won’t take away the jobs and reduce manpower but, would create different set of job opportunities for a vast number of people”
Amit Bhingurde, Chief Operations Officer, TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd

Amit Bhingurde, Chief Operations Officer, TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd. optimistically shares how robots won’t take away the manpower and their jobs, somewhat putting to rest the concern of losing jobs and also emphasises on how the industries has an ‘automated’ touch to everything.

Automation Expo 2018
Today, if you see, the entire world is transforming itself into automation and India is rapidly moving in the right direction as compared to last few years. Our main reason to participate in Automation Expo 2018 was to showcase our ‘Made in India’ industrial BRABO robot which is the need of the hour for India specially for the SMEs industries.

BRABO robot
Brabo robot is a completely indigenous design and develop robot. Our idea is to create this robot is to replace some of the operations which are done by the operators mainly like dull, dirty and dangerous operations. The robot will be easy to install, use, program and maintain. It comes with low-cost power transmission system. It will be able to work on single phase power supply
suitable for MSMEs. It has an inbuilt programmable logic controller and can act as a virtual controller for simulation.

Basically, we created a human hand which can replace an operator to perform dull, dirty and dangerous operations.

Would BRABO take away the jobs?
In India, we need automation to create good manufacturing setup. Today, people are educated and don’t prefer doing dull, dirty and dangerous operations. I would say, robots won’t take away the jobs. When you manufacture a robot, you are, in turn, creating a separate avenue for the manufacturing industry. A wide and varied number different components make up a robot. So, we are creating jobs for component manufacturing and IT programming sector. Also, jobs relating to maintenance of robots are generated. So, instead of what is generally thought, robots won’t take away the jobs and reduce manpower but, here, we are creating different set of job opportunities for a vast number of people.

Introducing Brabo for SMEs
Currently, our intention is to introduce this robot in the Indian market. Indian customers and the SME sector desperately need robots or automated products to improve their productivity and quality, because they are the direct suppliers to OEM. The OEMs can manufacture quality products only if they use standard materials. That’s the reason we introduced BRABO for the SME sector, where better products can be manufactured, and then later introduce them to the OEMs.

Market response
We launched the robot in April 2017 (5-axis robot) and on July 2018, we launched the 6-axis robot. In both the launches, we realised that the robot response is extremely good and we were surprised by the huge requirement of robots in India. We got more than 250 orders for the last financial year. Till today, across India we have supplied around 100 robots with the applications. We are getting more orders this year as well and we feel that it may cross 300 orders. We are on the verge of creating a revolution very soon.

To be a class apart
The products that we’ve introduced are simple to use and operate. Our robot is easy to maintain, use, programme, change operations/applications, and it’s affordable, too. We offer our products at 20-30 per cent lesser cost as compared to other robots in the market. Other than that, we have financing from Tata Capital, which also finances the SME sector. Easy finance is also available for the SMEs. Apart from that, the cost of ownership, including spare parts and maintenance cost, is extremely low. The main highlight, that I would like to point out is that because BRABO robots are made in India, we provide services all across the country.

Iska warranty kitna hai?
We have one-year warranty, which is generally given by any other product. This doesn’t have much of maintenance issues. We also give an extended warranty of one year and apart from that the cost of ownership is extremely low.

Brabo — Designed religiously for India
BROBO, more than anything, is a ‘Made in India’ product. Only motors and drives are the imported components. However, currently, we are on the lookout for Indian suppliers who can provide us with indigenous
motors and sensors. Once, we find suppliers for motors then it can be termed as the complete product of ‘Made in India’.

The global market launch
There are certain components that are e-certified or export-certified. We have been able to get the e-certificate, and with this, we can go into the European market very soon. We have even supplied some robots to Dubai and Italy and talks are underway in other Middle Eastern, European and American countries. But, currently, we want to improve our product in the Indian marker before heading to the foreign market. Hopefully, by next year, we should be going to the European or American market.

The BRABO seekers
We are getting requests from across all sectors, but the major one is from automobile sector. Number of robots required in automobile sector is very high. We are also getting requirement request for robots to be used in electrical, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. However, FMCG industry is going to be a big market.

People in the industry are realising that without going the automated way, they will be out of business and achieving productivity is next to impossible as the competition is so high. Also, this reduces the problems of union as well.

The future roadmap
Maybe, in another two months’ time, we will be launching the servo motor variants of robots. The stepper motors used in the current robots are a little bit slower than the servo motor. The servo motor speed is much higher, which will give more accurate and faster robots. There will be continuous addition of robots as well. Apart from that we are trying to find various sectors and industries that needs robots.