Cobots Do the Heavy Lifting at L’Oréal India

Universal Robots Case Study

L’Oréal – one of the world’s largest cosmetics companies – faced issues at its Indian plant in Pune, as end-of-the-line operations were being carried out manually, posing a severe ergonomic risk to workers. The deployment of collaborative robots for automatic palletisation proved efficient while completely eradicating ergonomic risk, allowing for flexibility in deployment on the shop floor for various applications. The cobots are also worker-friendly and maintenance-free and led to the plant witnessing a 5% Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) improvement due to the time saved in pallet replacement.

The Challenge

After an internal ergonomic risk analysis, the L’Oréal India Private Limited plant in Pune realised that their workers were at risk handling manual tasks in the end-of-the-line operation, i.e. putting the boxes on the pallet. Each operator lifted 8,500 kilograms of product per 8-hour shift, presenting what L’Oréal classified as a Level 4 ergonomic risk – one of the highest levels of danger to the human body and posture, with Level 5 being the severest.

The Solution

In an effort to be more flexible and agile in terms of serving the market in real time, the plant deployed its first collaborative robot from Universal Robots in 2016.

Before the installation of cobots, only one pallet was used at a time for a single application. With cobots, however, two pallets can now be used simultaneously without stopping the line, saving 30 minutes per shift. The plant also saw a 5% OEE improvement because of the time saved in pallet replacement.

“We have different people coming in to work on the same line, in different shifts. Thus, sometimes, when people change, it impacts the line’s efficiency,” said Mayur Raut, Manager of the production Unit at L’Oréal India. “However, cobots have increased process accuracy with a single click. Before the cobots, we had different setups requiring 60 -70 minutes to install. Thanks to cobots, we can now shift to a different application with a click of a button.”

To see the range of Universal Robots cobots, visit our UR Cobots page

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