Industrial & Factory Automation: The Acceleration of Robotic Process Automation

Industrial and factory automation is revolutionizing the manufacturing landscape leading to smart industry and flexibility in production. Factory automation is mostly driven by cloud technology, leading to the introduction of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) that has made robotic automation more viable for manufacturers, leading to an increased speed of production and accuracy. Robotic automation will provide superior abilities that will offer the advantage of communicating with one another and with cloud computing systems for long-term optimization based on big data analysis. 

Automation leads to the advancement in computing power, software development techniques, and networking technologies that makes the process of installing, assembling, and maintaining robots faster and also provides cost-effective solutions. Also, the installation of sensors and actuators has become an easy task, as they use plug-and-play technologies in which components are connected using simpler network wiring. These sensors and actuators include features like self-diagnostics and are easily linked to the robots that further processes or collects the data that improves the production of a facility or a unit. 

As of now the major trends in industrial automation is the shift towards smart manufacturing, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Cognitive Automation. RPA uses artificial intelligence and helps the manufacturers replace manual tasks with high-end automated systems. Automation can be best deployed if it is brought together with RPA. Therefore, the deployment of current trends in factories and industries indicates that RPA is extending automation to new areas and helping companies become more efficient and agile. Also, the growing advancements in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), sensor technologies, and cognitive computing are expected to trigger a new wave of automation with several possibilities. These technologies will create opportunities for automation in the manufacturing industries providing a flexible manufacturing system.

The implementation of RPA sometimes leads to challenges; however, once the initial set-up cost is taken into account, it has the potential to fuel businesses. Thus, the introduction of AI and machine learning with RPA to industry 4.0 represents a big change for the manufacturing industry, opening new business opportunities, and the introduction of new business models. Also, advanced automation solutions eliminate repetitive human tasks in business processes. RPA is bound to expand its reach as more enterprises become aware of its benefits.

The growing innovations and developments in RPA is gaining a tremendous momentum, which has led to the integration of collaborative robots with RPA that will have a positive impact on automation and will also transform industry 4.0 to industry 5.0. This transformation will completely converge robotic capabilities and human skills. Thus, cobots with RPA will provide easy and safe programmable solutions, which will offer a great return on investment. Moreover, these cobots will incorporate AI chatbot applications that work in conjunction with humans across the manufacturing process, and thus increases the demand for robotic process automation (RPA) enhancing the factory automation.

Industry and factory automation has accelerated RPA technology and is increasingly leading to the unstoppable automated execution of business processes in the industry with major improvements and cost models. And, increasing integration of RPA with cognitive computing will lead to the formation of cognitive RPA, which will reduce the issues developed by RPA. Cognitive RPA will transform semi-structured and unstructured data into structured data, which can then be easily processed by the robots. The recent developments in artificial intelligence and RPA will bring about a huge change in automation that will support new business models as well as drive major competitive advantages. Thus, the shift towards cognitive RPA will bring about end-to-end automation solutions that will provide opportunities for various industries such as automotive, manufacturing, and so on.