NSK Steering Systems recognized for advances in 'cobots'

From left, Mark Edwards and Matt Wilson are members of the NSK Steering Systems America Bennington engineering team.

BENNINGTON – The NSK Steering Systems America facility on Shields Drive has received recognition from its Japanese parent company for its work in developing and implementing multiple collaborative robots – “cobots,” for short.

As of late July, the plant, which manufactures automotive parts that are shipped either directly to automakers or to another related facility in Tennessee for further assembly, had successfully installed three cobots. Another is slated to be deployed by the end of the month, according to plant manager Jeff Cushman.

In recognition of this effort, the Bennington facility recently received an internal “excellence” award for 2022, the criteria for which included facilities’ commitment to innovation and quality.

Unlike earlier robot models deployed at the plant, which essentially need to be enclosed in a cage due to safety precautions, cobots can perform tasks next to human operators, Cushman explained. Safety sensors stop the cobot from running when an operator comes within a certain proximity to perform quality checks, machine adjustments or other activities.

The Bennington plant, which has been in operation for about 35 years, expects to install an additional five cobots by the end of March 2024, when the company’s current fiscal year concludes, Cushman said.

“What we're doing with the cobots is we're trying to eliminate ergonomic risks for our employees,” Cushman said. “[We’ve] eliminated repetitive motion from the operator by doing this.”

The cobots now handle physical tasks like moving and packaging parts, while employees remain responsible for conducting periodic measurements of parts to verify that they meet standards, according to Cushman.

Implementing a cobot is no simple matter, Cushman explained. The facility’s engineering department needs to program and teach each cobot how to operate the machine to which it is assigned.

“Once we get the cobot here,” Cushman said, “it's about a three to four month lag time to do all the internal activities where we can actually put that into production.”

In other words, “it’s definitely not ‘plug [in] and play,’” he added.

Two of the facility’s approximately 156 employees are specifically dedicated to its cobot efforts. About 80 percent of their time is focused on implementation, Cushman said, meaning “it’s pretty labor intensive once [a cobot] gets here to make sure it works right.”

Current customers of the Bennington plant include Toyota and Honda, according to Cushman.

NSK Steering Systems America is a subsidiary of NSK Ltd., which “is the top supplier of bearings in Japan and is the third largest supplier in the world by market share,” according to a recent company press release available on its corporate website.

The parent company has more than “200 business locations in 30 countries alongside a vast network of joint ventures and partnerships in all corners of the world,” the release states.