The automobile industry is thriving speedily. That’s not surprising though, since cars these days are a basic need for every developed civilization. The global city lifestyle depends on cars since people need to travel many dozens of kilometres multiple times a day. In addition, it’s been a long time since the first car was manufactured back in 1885 based on Carl Benz’s first one- cylinder model, (History,2017), so it’s perfectly normal that now the car industry is one of the largest industries worldwide. Prior to the second oil price, in 1979, about 30 million cars were manufactured every year and about 5 million people were employed in significant car industry nations such as Altshuler et al., (Law, 1991). In 2016 a production of 94,976,569 (Oica.net, 2017) vehicles was recorded globally and that proves how much the car production industry is developing nowadays. But this raises many questions. How cars are manufactured in such big numbers? Do people manually build cars now? How the car industry is affected by the rise of technology?
Firstly, vehicles were produced by having workers, that were specialized on horse coaches, working on a single car until it was assembled and then proceeded to the next one. The car makers purchased the engines of the car and assembled them in an altered coach (Automotive Training Centre, 2014). However, automotive manufacturing now is proceeding mostly with the well-known process of the ‘assembly line’, an invention that revolutionized the 20th century’s industries including of course the automotive industry. Ransom Olds was the founder and the brain behind this idea right from the beginning of the 20th century in 1901. He changed the way his company produced cars, to the assembly line process. This allowed him to multiple the company’s annual output of cars by a factor of five. His company named ‘Oldsmobile’ managed to produce cheaper cars that were made easily but still looked classy in bigger numbers. Henry Ford then used that idea and upgraded it in a very handy way which consists of platforms where all the necessary parts of the cars were found and towed to ‘stations’ where workers were doing repeatedly the same installments and then moved on to the next station where the next installments were made(Figure 2). This kept repeating up to the last station where all the vital parts were assembled to form the vehicle (Corday, 2014).
This concept of the assemble line is still the basis of vehicle production industries. The whole process consists of several fundamental phases and this is how most automobile industries operate (Figure 3). The first phase of this process can be called as the ‘supply chain’, which is the outflow of information, raw materials and goods from the suppliers to the collection point, in this case the construction plants. Then, specialized workers or automation systems assemble the first parts of the vehicle so that the next phase of ‘chassis’ start. Chassis is the framework of the car (like the skeleton of humans!) where basically all the other parts are incorporated on. This framework is stick on a platform that is moving on a line and the vehicle is basically constructed as it is moving and all the mechanical parts of car are first integrated, such as the engine, the suspensions of the car, the breaking system etc. The next phase is to attach the body of the vehicle. Firstly, the floor pan must be assembled correctly, afterwards the right and the left panels of the car are joined to the floor pan and then any door panel is added, followed by the rear deck, the hood and finally the roof. The chassis and body integration is usually being carried out by robotic systems. Inspection of the body kit is then followed and the car proceeds to the next phase. Specialized workers make sure that the car’s surface is smooth and smoothen up any deformations or dimples so that the car can be painted without any flaws. The car is then painted by machines by immersing the car in paint and then an undercoat layer is added and then the paint is dried using heat. Afterwards the car is immersed again in the base coat and dried again. When the base coat is finally dried, the interior of the car needs to be assembled, so the body is moved to the interior station and all the fundamentals of the interior of the car are installed. These include the steering wheel, the gas and brake pedals, the speedometers, the steering column, the carpets, all the electronic systems and the windows. Depending on the model of the car, extra interior components may be added, such as display screens and movement sensor systems. Finally, the car is taken to the last phase of its construction called ‘Chassis/Body Mating’ where the car’s two main parts, chassis and the body, are connected. The car is then tested by computing machines again in order to esure that the two body parts cohere properly, so that the car can get to the speeds required and to be able to withstand them without any complications. At last when the car is tested and is wheeling as expected it can then be proceeded to the automobile market (Carlton, n.d.).
Automation is the use of technologically advanced equipment which is programmed to perform any operation, previously carried out by humans. As mentioned above during the Chassis and the Body phase, automation is used when robotic systems integrate the corresponding parts as the chassis is moving. Therefore, there is no human interference on the integration process. This idea was developed by engineers during the 1950’s and the 1960’s and in 1969, Stanford Arm, a robot that was able to transfer and incorporate different parts, was created by Victor Steinman, an engineer employed by Stanford. This discovery increased the use of robots in different ways that were applied then in modern automobile manufacturing (Corday, 2014). This caused the geographical range of industrial production to expand speedily across the whole world for the next 30 years and in countries of the Third World like Japan who then became an industrial power (Law, 1991). In Figure 4 the table shows the car output in many countries across the world in 1977 and in 1988.
Robotic systems (figure 5) offer a huge range of advantages to the automobile industries. On the economic point of view, robotic system replaced the workers that manually constructed the chassis and the body so companies are benefited as they get rid of warranty costs. Also, they were exempted by the human error that workers possessed, so the production is performed with less wasted raw material. Robots can do repeated work without getting tired and always perform in the same way so the production rate is always the same. Assembled with visual sensors robots can identify any abnormality on approaching material and then send that material to the corresponding path. Machines don’t require specific conditions to operate like humans do, so they can work in extreme conditions considering they are constructed with material which fit these conditions. Therefore, workers are protected when they need to deal hazardous fumes especially with welding for example and robots can do all the heavy lifting of the materials so that workers don’t suffer from any skeletal or muscle problems (Acieta.com, n.d.).
Today, automotive industry’s usage of robots ranks highest than any other industry in the whole world and over the last few years companies invested huge amounts of money on that. In 2013, 70,000 robots were planted in car factories reaching new records. Every year, since 2010, USA’s car production was raised by a mean of 15.86%. This had also an impact on the employment rate in 2013 raising it by 21%. USA ‘s robot density is ranked 3rd in the world with 1,111 units, meaning that there are 1,111 robots planted for every 10,000 employees in the automobile industry. The biggest powerhouse of the automobile industry though is China which was considered as Third World Country in the 20th century and in 2014 produced over 23 million cars. Two fifths of the whole country’s robots are used in this enormous car production market. Estimations by International Federation of Robotics say that by 2017 the number of robots in automobile industries in China will reach 428,000 units (Nowak, n.d.).
Although robots offer so many benefits to the automobile industries they come also with the disadvantage of paying to build them and most importantly they need energy to operate so energy is used up on them therefore adding to the world-wide fuel consumption problem. However, looking at the economic point of view of the automobile industries they find robots more profitable since paying workers is more expensive than paying for the maintenance of robots which are also much more efficient and can work at any hour. For example, in 2012 Rethink Robotics’ launched Baxter, a robot that operates at low costs, specifically operates with $3 per hour which is less than half the minimum wage of USA which is $7.25 per hour and much lower than UK’s at $10.13 ((Corday, 2014), (En.wikipedia.org, n.d.)). Rethink tries continuously to improve Baxter so that variety of industries can use it. Industries don’t worry about the fuel consumption of robots that much, because robots are also used in other industries such as mining or diving industries to find recourses for energy production. This, somehow, cancels out the fuel consumption problem of robots.
The automobile industry was revolutionary in the 20th century due to the invention of the assembly line that changed the way that most other industries operated and now this idea is the basis that all of them follow. In addition, by adding the automation systems, efficiency is increased immensely. Automobile industry was a huge factor for that development and it will keep developing as the technology is advancing.
References
- Acieta.com. (n.d.). ROBOTIC MANUFACTURING IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY. [online] Available at: http://www.acieta.com/why-robotic-automation/robotic-solutions-industry/automotive-applications/ [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].
- Automotive Training Centre. (2014). Understanding the Automotive Assembly Process. [online] Available at: http://www.autotrainingcentre.com/blog/understanding-automotive-assembly-process/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017]. Bélanger-Barrette,
- M. (2014). Top 5 Robotic Applications in the Automotive Industry. [online] Blog.robotiq.com. Available at: https://blog.robotiq.com/bid/69722/Top-5-Robotic-Applications-in-the-Automotive-Industry [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017]. Carlton, R. (n.d.).
- Car Manufacturing Process. [online] Itstillruns.com. Available at: https://itstillruns.com/car-manufacturing-process-5575669.html [Accessed 11 Oct. 2017]. Corday, R. (2014). The evolution of assembly lines: A brief history | Robohub. [online]
- Robohub.org. Available at: http://robohub.org/the-evolution-of-assembly-lines-a-brief-history/ [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017].
- En.wikipedia.org. (n.d.). List of minimum wages by country. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017]. History, C. (2017). Benz Patent Motor
- Car: The first automobile (1885–1886) | Daimler. [online] Daimler. Available at: https://www.daimler.com/company/tradition/company-history/1885-1886.html [Accessed 9 Oct. 2017]. Law, C. (1991). Restructuring the Global Automobile Industry. Milton: Routledge, p.1,15-16. Nowak, J. (n.d.). Industrial Robotics in the Automotive Industry. [online]
- The Material Handling Blog. Available at: https://www.bastiansolutions.com/blog/index.php/2015/09/17/industrial-robotics-automotive-industry/#.Wd-_0mhSxPY [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].
- Oica.net. (2017). Production Statistics | OICA. [online] Available at: http://www.oica.net/category/production-statistics/ [Accessed 9 Oct. 2017] Rethink Robotics. (n.d.). Sawyer Collaborative Robots for Industrial Automation | Rethink Robotics. [online] Available at: http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/sawyer/ [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017].