Which is right for you?
Both cobots and traditional industrial robots allow businesses to automate previously manual processes and speed up your processes while also making sure the quality levels remain high. As more and more companies begin to implement industrial automation into their workflows, it could be tricky for those without it to overcome the ongoing worker and skill shortages and free their human workers up for more fulfilling tasks.
Here at Universal Robots, we believe that no company is ever too small to benefit from automation. And while a traditional industrial robot may be out of reach for a lot of companies, a cobot certainly isn’t. In fact, they offer a lot of other potential benefits too.
Costs
One of the biggest differences between an industrial robot and a cobot is the costs. For managers and teams looking to create a solid value case to get leadership buy-in, it can be easier to justify purchasing a cobot rather than a traditional alternative. Not only do cobots represent a smaller upfront cost, but the ongoing cost of ownership also tends to be lower. Our cobots typically achieve ROI in under a year, but lower maintenance costs and energy usage could also be a factor.
Flexibility
It is important to realize that if you decide to go down the traditional industrial robots route, you are committing yourself to a set course of action. Once an industrial robot starts doing a particular task, that is likely all it will ever do. This may be ok for larger companies with more intensive operations, but this inflexibility is not right for a lot of companies. The ability to reprogram a cobot more easily as well as modify them with a wide range of specialized grippers, sensors, components and software means that a single cobot can perform a variety of functions. With one in your toolkit, you can be confident you have an effective way to automate tasks as your business continues to grow.