Soon after the assembly line managed to turn the Ford Model T into the world’s first true mass-production car in 1913, it became clear that breaking down what was once artisanal engineering into rigid, repetitive, and siloed steps was not particularly enjoyable for many workers. In fact, Ford famously had to double its wages within just months to stop an exodus of line workers and engineers.
For most workers, the assembly line and mass production turned car making into a tedious, alienating task that simply demanded that workers repeat simple rote movements endlessly. This comes down to human nature - humans aren’t psychologically or physiologically well-suited to repeating rigid, simple movements without a chance to make any decisions or think about what they’re doing.
By contrast, the simplest robotic arm can flawlessly do the exact same mundane task endlessly, without any deviation, so long as it’s properly maintained and powered. So, it’s no surprise robotics and automated processes began to replace human-led workstations on car assembly lines throughout the late 20th century and the early 21st century. In many modern production environments for cars, most of the rote steps are now automated.
This has allowed engineers, technicians, and factory workers to be more productive than ever before: they’re often now responsible for overseeing, maintaining, and planning the activity of complex machinery that can match the output of dozens or hundreds of people. And even when people are involved in direct production and assembly tasks, they are today often engaged in tasks that depend on what sets humans apart: our fluid intelligence, dexterity, and problem-solving skills.
The Horse Powertrain team at Aveiro, Portugal has been utilizing Cobots for several years
If robots are handling today’s high-throughput, ultra-precise, and rote assembly tasks, and if humans are handling more nuanced tasks that are resistant to brute-force automation, then there is a challenge: how does a human interact with these automated systems and assembly lines?
The reason this question turns out to be a challenge is that it can create a problem of synchronizing the work of human workers with that of the factory to prevent shortages throughout the production chain. At the same time, it also opens up a question of basic health and safety: making sure that workers are safe, given the potential strength and power of many robotic systems versus the human body.
Enter collaborative robots, also known as cobots.
Unlike stationary robots that must be segregated from human workers and are intended to execute pre-programmed routines, a cobot is a robotic system designed to work right alongside humans. Fitted with sensors, cameras, and human-readable controls, cobots are designed to safely work alongside people and fluidly respond to them. They also communicate with the wider factory and assembly line to coordinate the output of their human partners with the output of the assembly line to avoid blockages or shortages from forming up or down the line.
Since 2024, the Horse Powertrain team at Aveiro, Portugal, has been pursuing an exciting deployment of cobots: using them to assemble power electronics boxes (PEBs) for hybrids.
Combining power inverters, converters, and control systems, PEBs represent a complex piece of integrated electronic engineering - the sort of thing that human judgment remains critical for. To that end, the Aveiro team opted to pair humans working on critical phases of PEB assembly with mobile programmable cobots (MPCs), which act as mobile workstations, delivering components, tools, and subassemblies directly to workers and to fixed robotic workstations alike.
Rather than forcing robotic stations to compromise for humans, or humans to compromise for robots, MPCs allow both to do what they do best. As a result, they’ve successfully reduced footfall at Aveiro’s PEB line by 25% and cut its energy consumption by 50%. And for workers, this has meant less physical strain, fewer repetitive tasks, and more time to focus on the most rewarding part of their work.
Cobots have been used by Horse Powertrain to assemble power electronics boxes (PEBs) for hybrids
Read more about how software is reshaping the automotive value chain.
In the long run, workers and businesses both benefit from increasing productivity at plants. But while that meant breaking down artisanal processes into repeatable steps in the days of Henry Ford, today the opposite is at play. With the most routine and repetitive steps being automated, the role of workers in plants is often now to make decisions and to take charge of processes that we don’t want to break down into simple, rote, isolated jobs.
The key is finding a layer that allows humans to do what they do best, while also allowing robots and automated sections of assembly lines to do what they do best. This layer of process innovation via cobotics is a key process development, and Horse Powertrain is proud to be a leader in it as part of our commitment to advance the state of the art for the automotive industry as a whole.
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