Ford Motor Company has achieved a 15 percent cycle time improvement in manufacturing at its Livonia Transmission Plant in Michigan through the implementation of AI-enabled industrial robotics. The new robotics control system is being used in the assembly of transmissions for models including the Ford Bronco Sport, Escape and Edge.

Robots at the plant have been extended with AI functionality through SymbioDCS, a robot agnostic programming and management platform developed by Californian firm Symbio Robotics.

Assembly of transmissions is complex. Operators conventionally install heavy transmission components such as torque converters manually, a process that is challenging from an ergonomics and safety standpoint. In recent years, the process has been automated. Now Symbio is helping Ford to control the robot with AI which more efficiently installs components into the transmission based on the amounts of data it has collected. This new process allows the robot to predict how it should assemble components in the next transmission based off of its previous performance.

“Symbio’s focus is on delivering technology that allows companies like Ford to adopt AI as a core competency,” said Max Reynolds, Symbio CEO and co-founder. “AI-enabled automation looks very different. It’s not just about automation, it’s about providing tools that empower automation teams to deploy and maintain more general, flexible systems.”

“As the mobility landscape continues to rapidly change there is an increasing demand for much faster product life cycles,” said Harry Kekedjian, Advanced Controls and Digital Factory Manager at Ford. “Using the Symbio technology, we’ve observed a 15% improvement in cycle time and greater than 50% reduction in adapting to new products over the previous manufacturing method.”