Case Study: Soft Robotics Solution’s Griping System Enables Micron’s Pick & Place Process’s Automation

Micron Products, a Fitchburg, MA based contract manufacturing company that has its specialization in thermoplastic injection molding, precision machining, mold making, etc. In order to enhance quality at cost-effective rates, Micron was looking forward to automate their pick & place process of delicate plastic clips that the company was producing for the manufacturers of car seat, deprived of slowing down the time taken for the process or even damaging the product. Hence, in a nutshell the company’s main goal was to save money via automation that would ultimately result in lessening their labor costs.

Micron’s partial production was already automated, except of the pick & place process. And the current process required two manual labors as of now who were taking care of picking the clips off the conveyor followed by placing them in a box, which could at timed result in damaging the product. Hence, the company approached Advanced Automation that with the help of SOFT ROBOTICS SOLUTIONS gripping system designed and then integrated a high speed, pick & place system including ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker & Keyence vision system. These systems enables in effectively picking &placing delicate plastic clips deprived of damaging, at a production cost of merely over 100 parts/minute. 

SOFT ROBOTICS SOLUTIONS specializes in designing as well as developing soft robotic gripping systems & automation solutions that is capable of grasping as well as manipulating items of variable sizes, shapes & weight with a same device.

As a result, Micron’s return on investment over this solution was less than a year’s rate, since it enabled the company to evolve their process from 2 full time manual labor to just one part time, that not only saved Micron’s salaries costing bust also avoided any further damage of product in the process. However, the company was able to successfully utilize those talents in other departments rather than hiring any other candidate. Hence none of their employees as per them lost their jobs.