A consortium including the Business Lincolnshire Growth Hub has secured €2.3m from the ERDF to help facilitate co-operative automation in the food industry.
The University of Lincoln, the Business Lincolnshire Growth Hub and eight European partners in countries including Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have secured €2.3m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to help facilitate the co-operative automation (cobots) of the food industry.
The COTEMACO project (Increased COmpetitiveness Through Efficient MAn and Machine COllaboration) is a collaboration between manufacturing SMEs in north-west Europe which can struggle to maintain their cost competitiveness against large-scale production facilities in low-wage economies.
This sector specifically suffers workforce scarcity because employees in manufacturing SMEs are often subjected to physically repetitive tasks which do not use their full capabilities, and which can also have an adverse effect on their health.
The next step to increase competitiveness will only be achieved by offering high levels of production flexibility, enabled thanks to collaborative robotics.
Collaborative robots could potentially have as much impact within the manufacturing sector as 3D printing or the Internet of Things. They focus on enhancing the co-operation between human workers and industrial robots. Collaborative robotics manufacturing not only allows for a more efficient use of employees, but it also reduces health issues and increases motivation.
COTEMACO will deliver four regional field labs in the Netherlands, UK, Belgium and Germany, where the targeting of key production steps in automotive and food will be
showcased to overcome low awareness and knowledge gaps.
Testing in relevant environmental conditions, and allowing manufacturing SMEs to interact with them, will bring collaborative robotics closer to these end-users.
COTEMACO will engage with 60 SMEs in the automotive and food sectors in the field labs via voucher schemes and will work with 50 of those to implement collaborative
robotics through international cooperation.
Activity will start in 2018/9 and the project links directly to Greater Lincolnshire's Local Industrial Strategy work on productivity increases in the food processing
sector through automation and robotics.
For more information visit http://www.nweurope.eu/projects/project-search/cotemaco-increased-nwe-competitiveness-through-efficient-man-machine-collaboration/
