HUMANufacturing: here's how to innovate

Innovation is a recurring theme that accompanies almost every activity within Comau - from products to systems and from training to customer relations – and extends to spearheading a new era of automation that is open, connected, and easy to understand and use.

Aided by the winning combination of advanced technological know-how and long-term experience, Comau innovation is driving the development of new products, cutting-edge technologies and a powerful concept of the factory that optimizes human and machine-driven automation. We call this HUMANufacturing.

A New way of manufacturing

HUMANufacturing defines our approach to meeting the challenges and needs of an ever-changing market.

Combining Industry 4.0-enabled solutions with real-time data transfer, virtual reality and innovative wearable devices, we’re helping companies leverage the potential of right-sized automation to streamline their processes, ensure better quality and improve the flexibility of their production potential.

It’s a concrete example of how Comau is leveraging more than four decades of automation experience to design smart factory infrastructures that are inspired by innovation and backed by knowledge, culture and vision. More importantly, HUMANufacturing puts mankind at the center of a collaborative, safe and synergistic manufacturing environment.

Our innovation pillars

Open Innovation and co-creation is a strong part of our HUMANufacturing approach. Open Innovation allows us to take advantage of the ideas and energy from people outside our organization in order to generate disruptive innovations to products and solutions. Our Open Innovation model focuses on:

Easy to use solutions

Production architectures that are increasingly responsive to dynamic market demands, many of which require radical changes in terms of production topologies. Easy to use is a critical aspect of any product or solution Comau makes. This is what drove our Comau Human Machine Interface (HMI). It is also what drives our control engineers to design intuitive, easy to understand and easy to learn solutions that keep automation simple by hiding the innovative technologies and features that could be too intricate for the final user.

Added value manufacturing solutions blcked by advanced technologies

This innovation priority supports the development, refinement and implementation of a comprehensive set of enabling manufacturing technologies and innovative processes that facilitate flexibility, the use of advanced materials, the achievement of high performances in terms of quality and productivity (precision and zero-defect), efficiency in the use of energy and materials, and a drastic reduction of emissions.

Human robot collaboration

The focus of innovation activities under this innovation priority address symbiotic human-machine relations, which seek a deeper understanding of human behavior and go beyond conventional approaches.

The HUMANufacturing advantage

Comau’s new Industry 4.0 production methodology was first showcased in 2017. Today, HUMANufacturing has grown from a concept to a framework of added-value manufacturing services and solutions that are being deployed in factories all over the world.

Thanks to this integrated and increasingly interconnected manufacturing paradigm, we’re helping our customers experience higher productivity, better quality, faster time-to-market and lower costs.

Collaborative robotics solutions

Industrial cobots with high payload that work in close contact with operators within the assembly line, while man can deal with fewer heavy and more-value added tasks. AURA (Advanced Use Robotic Arm) is the Comau product dedicated to collaborative robotics.

Applications for smartwatches and smartphones

The man-machine interaction becomes even simpler and more immediate through mobile and wearable devices that are used by operators to trace/ certify the work cycle and to exchange data with the central system (MES - Manifacturing Execution Systems) and with the other elements of the industrial automation process.

Tablet with augmented reality applications

To increase the efficiency of the working process, the operator can perform real-time predictive maintenance operations using a tablet. Thanks to an augmented reality app framing the fluidic framework of the working cell, the operator can obtain simple, intuitive instructions for the technical control of the machine and its components without having to consult dedicated manuals.

Process data analysis

To optimize the cell workflow and its productivity, the operator can use the IoT Box Comau, an intuitive and immediate tool for the digital monitoring of each unit’s cycle data and, potentially, of the whole production process.

Mobile platforms

Autonomous, modular, flexible, and network-based driving systems to facilitate logistics applications in production systems, supporting the operators' work, such as the new Comau AGV Agile1500 system.

Automated modular systems

Modular working cells integrated with robotic solutions able to perform, in a full automated way, a large range of mechanical applications. Comau SmartRob is a modular system, equipped with an automatic tool changer, designed to handle multiple and flexible machining.

New skills for a “New Factory”

In the fourth industrial revolution, companies require new technical and managerial skills. Consequently, the learning models with which the new 'digital employees' are formed are changing.

Thanks to the activities of its Academy, Comau develops the skills of professionals called to operate in the 'factory of the future' with a degree aimed to respond to the new ways of operating digital manufacturing.

The new Executive Master in Manufacturing Automation & Digital Transformation is realized by Comau Academy in partnership with the ESCP Europe Business School and in collaboration with a network of prestigious international universities; it addresses companies that need to train or develop, within their team, the skills necessary to design and manage solutions of industrial automation more innovatively to meet the needs of Industry 4.0.

HUMANufacturing: Our way to industry 4.0