AUTOMATION ISN’T ALWAYS THE ANSWER You might think that a company called Frontline Robotics would be at the cutting edge of industrial production, relying heavily on advanced automation technologies for its manufacturing processes. But it doesn’t. And that is because of where the company is located, and what it does. Frontline Robotics is a Ukrainian manufacturer of drones and other weapons used by the country’s army on the frontline with Russia. To keep its products up-to-date, the company makes small changes to them up to 20 times a month, based on feedback from soldiers using the equipment. Every six months or so, it makes major changes to its line-up. Under these conditions, high levels of automation can limit flexibility. “Automation comes with cost of freezing the product version,” the company’s chief business development officer, Mykyta Rozhkov, told Business Insider recently. “With the amount of changes we are doing every month, huge fixed processes don’t work,” he explained. Not relying too much on automated processes is one of the keys that allows Frontline Robotics to innovate at the pace that it needs to. So the company is using a combination of machinery and manual assembly. It also designs its products so that they can be upgraded quickly. Another advantage of avoiding reliance on large automated machinery in Ukraine is that there is the constant threat that the equipment could be destroyed in a bombing raid, thus halting production entirely. Of course, producing military equipment under war conditions is not typical of manufacturing operations around the world. But the limitations of all-out automation and reliance on advanced technologies such as AI can be seen elsewhere too. The BBC recently reported that Ford in the US has rehired more than 300 “veteran” quality inspectors after finding that an AI-based system it had installed was not performing as hoped. Last year, Ford’s COO announced that the company was deploying AI across its entire industrial system, including the use of 900 AI-powered cameras designed to detect quality issues. But, according to Charles Poon, Ford’s vice-president of vehicle hardware engineering, the technology did not live up to expectations. “Mistakenly, we thought that just by introducing AI and ingesting the design requirements that we had, would produce a high-quality product,” he told reporters. But, the automated tools lacked the expertise of the veteran technicians, many of whom had left the company before their knowledge could be passed on. “We didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles,” Poon admits. So Ford has now rehired many of these experts. Their work will include training its systems and mentoring younger workers. When used wisely in the correct applications, industrial automation can be a game-changer for manufacturers. But it isn’t always the answer. Tony Sacks, Editor n COMMENT
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