Rethink Robotics wants to make advanced manufacturing smarter: Here’s how

Rethink Robotics is touting a value-add to its Sawyer manufacturing robots: a new feature called Intera Insights that displays key performance indicators (KPIs) on a customizable on-robot display, as well as on smart devices on the same network.

Think easy access to metrics including cycle time, part count, speed and force.

“Instead of just having it be ones and zeros — discreet signals — we’re actually going to package it up and turn into something useful like uptime and runtime, an average cycle time — all those kinds of things that manufacturers can use to better optimize the process and be a little bit more efficient,” Chris Harbert, Rethink’s VP of sales for North America, told Medical Design & Outsourcing last week at MD&M West in Anaheim, Calif.

The Intera 5.2 software expansion, announced in November 2017, is meant to give operators and line managers valuable data at a glance from Sawyer.

Whether it’s Rethink or others, making sure the data is actionable for manufacturers is the next step, Harbert said.

A manufacturer, for example, might figure out through the data that a bottle filler station is slowing down the line downstream. Or perhaps the factory floor layout is placing one line at a disadvantage over another when it comes to delivery of needed parts.

“The real magic comes with, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ … How do you integrate Sawyer’s data into performance data … discreet actions. How do you improve that right now?”

Rethink Robotics (Boston) serves advanced manufacturers in a wide array of industries, including the medical device space.