Though manufacturing companies deploying robots in their plants globally is no news, India still has abysmal levels of automation. However, TAL Manufacturing Solutions, a unit of Tata Motors, is now offering a cost effective solution to companies, with a Made in India industrial robot, which it claims will be 30 to 40 per cent cheaper than competing products and make companies more competitive.
TAL, which also makes components for commercial airplanes, officially launched two variants of the robot named Brabo on Tuesday. With payloads of two kg and 10 kg, and maximum reach of 600mm and 750mm, respectively, these are priced in the range of Rs 5-7 lakh. The company is targeting micro, small and medium enterprises as well as large manufacturers for these robots.
TAL already has 55 robots in operation at various companies. While it has sold 25 robots, 30 more have been installed on a trial basis. TAL Brabo counts utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra, ATM machines maker Diebold, auto component maker CPG Industries, parent Tata Motors and commercial vehicle maker Volvo Eicher, among its customers.
While the robot has been designed and styled in-house at TAL Manufacturing and Tata Elxi, another Tata Group arm Tata AutoComp manufactured some of the critical components of the robot.
It has been tested in over 50 different work streams and will be sold to companies in automotive, light engineering, precision-machining, electronics, software testing, plastics, logistics, aerospace and engineering among other sectors.
Brabo can be used in areas like assembly of parts, machine and press tending, as a sealing application and camera and vision based jobs.
“These robots are 30-40 per cent cheaper on the purchase price. But its attractiveness lies in for Indian customers, with much cheaper spare parts, since they are all manufactured in India and much cheaper annual maintenance contracts, because engineers within India would be doing it rather than engineers from abroad,” said RS Thakur, chairman, TAL Manufacturing.
The company has a capacity to manufacture 3,000 robots at its plant in Pune, Maharashtra. Currently, the world average deployment of robots is 69 per 10,000 workers, while in India its just two per 10,000 workers.
TAL officials say robots will be complementary to workers in factories and can take over some of the work that are repetitive, high-volume and dangerous, while not necessarily replacing workers all together in the future.
“Robots can't take over every job in the industry because gods design can never be replicated, be it brains or the dexterity of human fingers... So, it's a little over-hyped that employment will go away. Actually it will save employment,” said Thakur, adding using robots will give companies a competitive edge and thus help them expand further.
He cited the example of China, where he says from zero robots today there are around 49 robots per 10,000 workers, but the overall employment has still improved.
The Brabo robots were developed over three years and the company has invested around Rs 10 crore for the same.
TAL says using these robots can increase productivity by 15-30 per cent. The company recently received 'CE' certification for the Brabo, which makes it compliant with essential requirements relevant to European health, safety and environmental legislation. This will help TAL to sell the Brabo to customers in Europe.
TAL has inked a technology partnership with Italy-based RTA Motion Control Systems for motors and drives.
