Manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies across Europe face unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

 Manufacturers are quickly modifying production lines to help meet demand for personal protective equipment, ventilators and medical components.

Factories designed to produce perfumes are rushing to make hand sanitizers. Fashion retailers sourcing material in order to start producing face masks. And factories that once turned out one type of medical component are retooling to turn out different components on a massive scale.

The short-term challenge facing European pharma is not so much a change to current operations, but being able to quickly scale up operations to meet demand for testing and drug production.

And with an eye on post-Covid-19 realities, there are reports that some pharma companies are exploring the possibility of diversifying production sites to reduce dependence on individual factories and countries. In many cases, this will necessitate setting up new production lines in new facilities.

Whether you already own a FANUC cobot and you're exploring ways to best deploy it, or you are considering adding cobots to your pharma or manufacturing facility, read on –FANUC's CR and CRX series cobots can help you deal with today's high-pressure circumstances in some unique ways.

Ease of deployment
FANUC's cobots take up less precious factory space than traditional industrial robots, are easy to program and demand a small learning curve for end-users. FANUC's Hand Guidance feature, for example, allows you to train your cobot manually, without any coding knowledge. This means that FANUC's cobots can be quickly deployed to meet the current needs of your manufacturing or pharma facility.

While traditional, static automation systems can take months to design, install and integrate into your existing automation, cobots can be set up, integrated and put into use in a matter of days.

Flexibility
Human workers are the most flexible resource in your production process and FANUC's cobots are the most flexible of robots.

By bringing the best of the human skillset --flexibility and a common sense understanding of the world-- together with the best of the robotic skillset --accuracy, repeatability, and 24/7 availability-- our cobots enable modular and flexible manufacturing and pharma cell deployments.

If you are looking at ways to rapidly modify your production line, for example, and you're running up against production gaps surrounded by relatively static existing automation systems, consider filling those gaps and adding flexibility with a human-cobot team. Similarly, if you need a dispensing robot to support medical testing applications, consider how quickly you can scale up your capabilities by introducing additional humans and cobots to your pharma facility.

Additionally, FANUC's CR and CRX series offer a wide range of payload (from 4kg to 35kg) and reach (550-1813 mm) capabilities, allowing you to choose the ideal cobot for your needs. And because of their flexibility and ease of deployment, cobots will be useful long after the current pandemic has passed.

Safety
Safety of human workers remains a priority, even during times of rapid change. Designed to operate safely side-by-side with people and without the need for safety fences, FANUC's cobots offer additional safety features that bring peace of mind to end-users and support safe changes to your production lines.

FANUC's safe contact stop sensor technology, for example, immediately brings our cobots to a stop when they come into contact with a person or fixed object. Furthermore, our cobots offer customizable speed and safety settings, giving you the freedom and flexibility to achieve more with shared workspaces.

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