Commitment to produce motorcycles of best-in-class quality while improving productivity and ergonomics is what drove Bajaj Auto ltd. To choose universal robots’ cobots for their assembly lines. Being the first company in India to implement collaborative robots has enabled Bajaj to improve its production capabilities and evolve its multi-modeling offerings.

“In 2010, we were looking for solutions to automate our assembly lines,” said Vikas Sawhney, General Manager of Engineering (Robotics and Automation) Bajaj Auto in response to the automation advancements in the manufacturing industry over the last few decades. “Two-wheeler assembly lines are highly labor-intensive, spatially challenged and they have physically taxing movements that require high-end precision. While trying to automate these lines, one of the basic requirements was for standardization. Moreover, we also wanted to be cognizant of the requirements of the large women workforce at Bajaj.”

The business transformation

While standardization of models was a key tenet of Bajaj’s success in the market, it was rapidly expanding its production capabilities due to the growing scale of multiple models and the wide-ranging number of vehicles supplied in the market. The key then was to find a standardized automation solution that could be horizontally deployed and that could provide the productivity, flexibility and reliability that Bajaj’s workers could capitalize upon.

“After an intensive study of the options that were available in the market, Bajaj Auto chose Universal Robots primarily due to the collaborative nature of the robots. The key benefits of Universal Robots’ products such as their compactness, low payback period, flexibility, lightweight, cost-effectiveness, accuracy and safety, is what ultimately convinced Bajaj Auto about the suitability of Universal Robots for its standardized offerings,” Vikas added.