Within the Industry 4.0 context, investment in technology and innovation by industrial sectors is becoming increasingly relevant to the point that they are reinventing themselves and incorporating new technological tools and solutions into their production processes and routines.
ETMA is also aware of this fact and it has recently taken another step towards its technological future by investing in the robotisation of some of its processes, while prioritising one of its main pillars – people.
As emphasised by Ricardo Pereira, ETMA’s Production Manager, “robotisation is not only an automatic process that allows repetitive tasks to be carried out with greater efficiency and consistency when compared to human capabilities, but it also makes it possible to reassign employees to other tasks that have greater added value”.
In fact, “when people perform very repetitive and monotonous tasks, they are more exposed, for example, to labour risks (ergonomic problems and injuries, among others), which leads them to unconsciously make mistakes and to feel more demotivated in their work”.
By investing in robotisation, “one of the concerns of the company is to avoid these problems, by offering its employees the opportunity to carry out other more interesting, versatile and valuable tasks, often becoming supervisors of the robots themselves”, as well as undertaking quality control duties for the parts produced, which allows for a greater sampling of the characteristics of the parts in the Quality Department.
In addition to greater flexibility, safety and quality, ETMA is also deriving other tangible benefits from its investment in robotisation, such as increased precision and productivity, since it is undeniable that robots perform tasks much faster than humans, which allows for speeding up production and working 24 hours a day.
In the video below it is possible to see a robot on one of ETMA’s production lines feeding two machines simultaneously.