The production industry holds a vital role in maintaining human society when it manufactures the goods to satisfy human’s basic needs, even more than that, the need for self-confidence. During the growth of new technologies and networks, automation has become a phenomenon in industries, including the manufacturing sector. Result of the benefits of automation with fewer requirements of human resources and materials, businesses could produce more products with fewer errors. For example, in Malaysia, a self service kiosk pos Malaysia service providers brought into their business could cut down the amount of time and money spent on training, and HR. 

It is observable that the automation process is stepping deep into our daily life with examples from self-driving cars (BRT), online shopping, and online banking… However, people don’t have any sense of which types of automation are happening. Hence we are here to explain what kind of automation is available at the moment. 

There are three types of automation in production: fixed automation, programmable automation, and flexible automation

Fixed automation

Fixed automation or “hard automation” is when an automated manufacturing process with its sequence of operations is fixed by the equipment configuration. This means that a production chain is automated by the automation machine details that have been installed into the chain. Those machines themselves cannot do any other automation activities that are not within their designed capacity. The machine is programmed by physical components like a camera, gears, writing, and other hardware which is hard to change from one product style to another. However, this kind of automation will give out a high production rate – if the initial investments are also high. Thus, making them suitable for mass production, an example could be automobile manufacturing or chemical processes. 

Programmable automation

Programmable automation is more specific for producing products in batches which could vary from dozens to several thousand units at a time. After every old batch, the machine will be reprogrammed to accommodate new batches of production style. However, this reprogramming process will take up time, creating a routine of non-productive followed by the production run for each new batch. Therefore, this kind of automation has a low production rate when compared to fixed automation. Another distinguishing feature would be the programmable automation machine is that since it is designed to facilitate a product changeover instead of a product specialisation. The machines are running with computer code memory which is flexible for each different product style.

Flexible automation 

This kind of automation is an extension of programmable automation to deal with the disadvantages of losing production time, which is often expensive. With flexible automation, the kinds of products are sufficiently limited and the changeover could be achieved rapidly and offline. This means the changeover in programming could be done remotely at a computer terminal without using the production equipment itself. Additionally, different products could be produced one right after another. Allows meeting the demands of a diverse group of customers. An example would be a self service kiosk pos Malaysia restaurants

often use to collect orders from customers.