Who cannot relate to this? You are driving to work, listening to the radio to brighten up the dull commute. But listening quickly becomes boring if the radio keeps playing the same five hit songs over and over again. Similarly, packing goods in production can be a very dull task and while some people can make the best out of almost every boring situation, nobody enjoys doing the same repetitive job day in and day out.
That being said companies still need to package their products albeit tedious or even strenuous for employees. That’s where automation comes in; saving money, time, and freeing up workers for more demanding projects. A few years back, automation meant spending great amounts of money on heavy machines which required additional safety measures. Today, there is a trend towards small, flexible and lightweight robots, which can be employed in a number of tasks quickly and without the need to spend a big share of a company’s profits. This fact makes robots a valuable alternative especially for small- and medium-sized companies, that intend to increase their profitability, reduce repetitious responsibilities, or only have limited space in their production lines.
Two SMEs are tackling the current challenges in their own, unique ways: The Icelandic dairy producer, Mjolkursamsalan Akureyri, with 80 employees, faced the challenge of increasing their productivity and reducing the monotony of the assignments at hand. The world’s biggest producer of pipe tobacco, the Scandinavian Tobacco Group, intended to relieve its employees from ergonomically unfavorable packing processes although their packaging line was in a space-constrained area – a truly legendary challenge: