A worker assembles boxes beside an industrial palletizer from Formic at MattPak in Franklin Park, Illinois. Robots-for-rent is one way some small US factories gain access to automation, reducing turnover and ensuring workers aren’t injured. — Taylor Glascock/The New York Times
DETROIT: Employees at S&F Foods dreaded lifting heavy cardboard boxes from a conveyor belt and placing them onto pallets for shipment all day. So Mike Calleja, the plant manager for the company, which makes frozen food for school cafeterias, hired a robot.
Buying a robot could cost as much as US$500,000 (RM2.11mil), and Calleja wasn’t even confident that one would work. Instead, he rented a robot from Formic, a Woodridge, Illinois, firm that takes care of installation, training, programming and repairs. It costs about US$23 (RM97) an hour, roughly the same as a human.
