A small manufacturer of custom injection molding machines in the United States says using Baxter collaborative robots helps the company stay competitive and defend itself against price competition from China. The company, Vanguard Plastics, has 42 employees and 21 injection molding machines. The company has installed three facial Baxter cobots on the production floor and is preparing to install a fourth at another location for employee training.

Plastic News recently interviewed the factory, which has also attracted TV news crews from Japan, Germany, Sweden and the U.S. business news channel CNBC, all of whom were curious about how the robots work.

The company's general manager Cleese. Bydnick told reporters that Baxter Cobots move slowly to ensure safety when working with people, and that the robots have helped improve the company's bottom line. The company has annual sales of about $7 million.

He said," "Usually a Chinese factory as big as ours needs at least 100 workers. Our competitive advantage is that we have fewer employees, in other words, our output per capita is twice that of theirs. We're profitable. We don't have to move to Mexico or be threatened with moving to Mexico. We're still in New England. " The company is headquartered in Southington, Conn.

Baxter robot with emoji computer screen ". Face "; ", even non-technical people are relatively familiar with RETHINK's two-armed robots. Collaborative robots are those that can work alongside employees without the need for additional safety guards.

The Baxter robots can handle up to five pounds and move like a fashion walk -- a far cry from the fast-moving Whitman robots, which zipped in front of and behind the punching machines at Vanguard's injection molding plant. Instead, Baxter's tasks include steering column assemblies, twice-moulded parts that are put together by employees. Baxter then moves the parts through a video inspection system that allows three cameras to perform 13 different quality checks on the auto part simultaneously.

Boston-based RETHINK Robotics launched the Baxter robot in 2012. Then, in 2013, Vanguard was one of the first companies to buy Baxter's collaborative robots. A second and third robots were purchased over the next year, Mr. Birdnick said. Earlier this year, the company bought a fourth cobot. When we visited the factory, the wheeled robot was sitting aside, not yet powered up, and the company was going to use it for employee training.

Baxter's robot costs around $25,000, which isn't a huge investment to buy a robot.

The job of one of the robots is to mechanically stack single-purpose medical plastic cups and place them into a packing machine. "Said Birdnick. "We're still selling at 1990s prices, and if we don't, we're either going to stop manufacturing, and the products are already being made in Mexico or China." We certainly don't want that, so we have to figure out how not to listen to people talk about product loyalty, supply chains, strategic partnerships. These are nonsense, the ultimate competition is price competition. If you can't offer a competitive price, it will be eliminated by products from other places on the planet, whether they have logistical or quality issues or not. "

said his father founded Vanguard Plastics in 1972 with a single injection molding machine and himself as chairman and CEO, and he has always been open to new things and willing to adjust the way it operates.

In the early 1990s, the company's management focused on increasing productivity and improving it every year. To meet the challenges ahead, Birdnick took a two-step approach, increasing automation and having its own product line after acquiring two flour supply and food service products companies in 2014. "Said Birdnick. "We had our own proprietary product, so we started climbing up the value chain. " Vanguard is putting more money into updating its offerings.

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