Japanese bio-pharmaceutical pioneer Takeda Pharmaceutical Company has a presence in over 80 regions. As a key part of its global production network, its drug manufacturing facility in Oranienburg produces more than six billion tablets and capsules each year. This significant number of drugs is required to be order picked at the end of each production line and placed onto pallets ready for shipment – back-breaking work averaging a weight of 5.8 tonnes per shift, from which the company was keen to relieve its workers.
Since the introduction of the FANUC CR-15iA, the company said, productivity has improved considerably, with the cobot working 24/7 while meeting all health and safety requirements.
While Takeda sought to delegate the heavy lifting to a robot counterpart, it also wanted to ensure its human workforce did not feel that their roles would be threatened by an automated alternative. “We involved the workers as early and intensively as possible,” Takeda Project Manager Robert Gundlach, who knew from experience in other projects that success depends on acceptance by staff, said in a statement.
“It was made clear to people that a robot is nothing more than a stepping stone to make work easier. We sold the robots as new colleagues, not as new technology.”
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