With their flexibility, speed and accuracy, today’s robots are helping companies transform their operations, making them more efficient, competitive, and productive. Yet some users are putting that productivity bonus in risk by using sub-optimal spares.
Robots offer a wide range of benefits over conventional machines, but they need regular maintenance to keep delivering peak levels of performance. This often involves holding a stock of spare parts so that any issues can be remedied quickly to keep production on track. With cost pressures as they are, it may be tempting to opt for non-branded or generic parts, sourcing them through third party suppliers. However, that can prove to a be an expensive mistake, because fake parts can often lead to real problems.
Protect your productivity
Take smart phone manufacturing for example. Most of the major consumer electronics companies rely on contract manufacturers to make the luxury products consumers crave. Producing high-end electronics demands the highest levels of precision from these contract manufacturers, who usually deploy robots to help make everything from components to finished products, always working within tight tolerances to exacting specifications. If a robot is fitted with a generic motor or other components, it increases the risk that calibrated settings and parameters may be wrong.
One typical job is polishing the aluminium frames found in all mobile phones. If a component such as a motor pinion is not quite right, the robot may apply the wrong pressure to the surface while polishing the workpiece.
Similarly, even the tiniest variation in the path of a robotic system can make a big difference during the assembly process, positioning components incorrectly so they fail to connect and function properly in the finished product. While this is clearly detrimental to the production of phones and wearables, it can be even more serious for products such as medical parts, where no defects can be tolerated.
Contract manufacturers are usually tasked to produce a certain number of units in an agreed number of hours, leaving factories operating on very slim margins. Poor quality units resulting from inaccurately controlled robots will increase scrap and reworking, taking more time, driving up costs, and potentially resulting in reputational damage for the contractor.
Protect your investments
Using non-genuine parts can also damage the robot itself. For instance, opting for non-standard cables and wiring can damage power distribution boards, leading to downtime and repair costs. Worse still, using fake parts also voids the system’s warranty, leaving users paying extra to source a genuine replacement through the official channels, effectively doubling the outlay and taking longer to fix.
Although few ABB customers would risk installing non-ABB motors in their robots, even sourcing a genuine component via a non-verified vendor carries a risk.
More than 35,000 spare parts support the ABB robots being produced today, and it can be all too easy for a non-verified provider to inadvertently supply a part with the incorrect specification for the application. It may not cover the required temperature range, for instance, or it may not meet the necessary protection standard to do a specific job safely and effectively. For this reason, it pays to be cautious when buying a component from a third-party vendor.
In contrast, ABB has a world-wide network of service engineers with access to a comprehensive customer database that ensures they specify the perfect spares every time. This is based on our comprehensive knowledge of the customer’s application and the equipment they are using. ABB’s Smart Service Information (SSI) database stores recorded maintenance data, R&D cases, cause analysis cases, and other information that can be used to track applications and identify the root cause of any problems. Combined with our expertise in designing, manufacturing and supplying robots and the components used to build them, this knowledge helps ensure that the right parts are always available when needed.
Protect your bottom line
Using genuine parts from ABB comes with a host of benefits compared to sourcing parts on the ‘grey market’.
Choosing genuine ABB parts helps users minimize the total cost of ownership for their robotic systems, saving money by extending the robot’s useful life, optimizing its reliability, and guaranteeing its robustness with a 12-month warranty. Similar benefits apply whether customers are choosing new parts, exchange parts, repaired parts, preventive maintenance kits, or repair kits.
Most importantly, genuine ABB spare parts are always the perfect fit for an ABB robot, ensuring customers receive the long-term reliability of a high-quality product that is an exact duplicate of whatever was fitted previously. By avoiding the need to fix issues caused by imitation spare parts, using ABB spare parts helps prevent unplanned downtime from premature failures, avoiding costly production stoppages and missed delivery deadlines that can impact on the bottom line.
Whatever you need, wherever you need it
ABB supplies parts and solutions according to a robot’s serial number and can advise users on which parts they should have in stock. We can also advise on the best approach to upgrades - when to refurbish and when to undertake a full replacement to take advantage of new features or improved performance and safety.
ABB has six distribution centres in Asia, Europe and Americas, enabling us to commit to a maximum three-day turnaround on orders. With over 1,750 experienced robotics service professionals in more than 53 countries around the world, help with robot spares and maintenance is never far away.
Buy it once, buy it right
To borrow a cliché, a robot, like any machine, is only as good as its component parts. While lower-cost imitation parts might seem appealing at first, any short-term savings can quickly disappear when problems arise. When reliability and performance matter, it’s always worth investing a little more upfront to avoid unexpected costs and ensure long-term peace of mind.
To find out more about how to make the right choice when it comes to robot spares, visit our web page.
Michael Hose
Managing Director,
Customer Service, Robotics
