Building, running and maintaining a manufacturing facility is as expensive an undertaking today as it has ever been.  In an ever-changing global marketplace, advantages are much sought after and at a premium.  One of the most cost effective ways to shift to lean manufacturing, or cost-prohibitive high output transitional manufacturing, is the use of modern age robotics – the kind of robotics supplied by FANUC Robotics.

With lean manufacturing, the goal is to eliminate as much of the downtime, quality issues and unnecessary expenditures as possible – in essence, downsizing the possible problems and necessary components while increasing productivity.  As daunting of a task as that seems, robotics are a great answer in industrial applications.  Lean Manufacturing is a growing trend in the manufacturing industry that can ultimately help companies to become more profitable. The concept, which began evolving about 50 or 60 years ago in the automotive industry, involves the implementation of manufacturing techniques that result in more efficient factory production.

The objective of lean manufacturing is to reduce waste at all points in the production process and to maximize the quality of the product through maximized efficiency. The explanation behind the theory is that the end user should not have to pay for any inefficiencies and/or mistakes throughout the production process, but should only have to pay for the quality of the product.
Lean Manufacturing is an ongoing cycle of four basic steps:

• Realization: first a company must realize that inefficiencies occur in the manufacturing process
• Identification: a review of the process is done to identify wastes
• Solution: solutions are created to remove wastes
• Implementation: solutions are implemented