The need to collaborate across various manufacturing disciplines was further emphasized during the pandemic. So was the need to better utilize technology to meet those goals.
As part of the 2021 MD&M West event, show organizers have created the Design. Engineer. Build. Conference. It features speakers from companies as diverse as Procter & Gamble and Waypoint Robotics that will look at topics as diverse as 3D printing, autonomous mobile robots and interoperability.
“As AMR adoption in industry continues to accelerate, integration complexity and costs are becoming more apparent. Interoperability is one of the key levers to help reduce complexity, minimize integration costs and ultimately enable broader adoption of AMRs in the workplace—topics I look forward to exploring with my peers,” said Bob Bollinger, technical director for applied robotics innovation at Procter & Gamble.
“We strongly believe in the robotics community coming together like this to help companies of all sizes more readily adopt AMRs for their workers,” said Waypoint Robotics CEO & Co-Founder Jason Walker. “Waypoint is committed to ease of use, and initiatives like these will make it easier for workers to delegate all kinds of time-consuming tasks to AMRs, so these workers can focus on jobs for which people are uniquely qualified.”
Among the Design. Engineer. Build sessions are:
Panel: Interoperability to Increase Robot Adoption
This session will discuss work around interoperability standards and answer questions about this crucial next step in the evolution of robotics and automation.
Panel: How to Include Your Workers Early and Often to Maximize Robot ROI
This session discusses the use of robotics to improve safety and efficiency and the effect of such deployments on human workers, as well as the importance in involving them in robotic deployment.
Panel: How to Rebuild Your Manufacturing Team with Industry 5.0
While much of the shortfall in human workers can be recovered through investment in Industry 4.0 solutions (automation, robotization and digitization), humans will still be a part of the future of manufacturing. Industry 5.0 technologies that place humans and human ingenuity and adaptability at the center of advanced manufacturing processes promise to help companies get more out of smaller teams.
Panel: Ask the Experts--Metal Additive Manufacturing
Additive manufacturing with metal has many advantages, but it also has unique challenges. The panel of additive manufacturing experts will be on hand to answer questions, explore ideas and help guide the best decision.