RS, Schneider Electric Facilitate Smart Manufacturing

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RS, a global product and service solutions provider for industrial customers, offers Schneider Electric's Lexium product portfolio, which combines innovative, tested and proven mechanical, electrical, and PLC logic devices — including cobots — with powerful, intuitive software to provide end-to-end integrated smart manufacturing solutions ideal for use in automotive, electronics, consumer packaged goods, metal, machinery, life science, logistics, and warehouse applications.

Smart manufacturing is an umbrella term for Industry 4.0 processes that utilize automation and digitization to improve things like quality, productivity, efficiency, safety, and sustainability, and these processes are fueled by interconnected, data-driven networks of industrial machines, including a steadily increasing number of robots.

The Lexium product portfolio makes it easy and economical to deploy end-to-end integrated smart manufacturing solutions.

While robotics certainly aren't a new concept, today's industrial robots are more accessible than ever due to greater market availability combined with a lower total cost of ownership driven by increased competition, technological advancements, economies of scale, improved energy efficiency, and labor cost savings. This has made industrial robots a more attractive and attainable solution for overcoming common market challenges, including skilled labor shortages, and meeting quality and sustainability goals than they were in years past.

Industrial robotics installations grew 31% between 2020 and 2021 and have continued to climb steadily since — with the 541,302 industrial robots deployed in 2023 falling just 2% shy of the record 552,946 units installed in 2022. Collaborative robots, or cobots, which are designed to safely share workspace with humans, are one of the fastest-growing segments of this market, accounting for 10.5% of industrial robots deployed in 2023 and reaching a global market value of $2.14 billion in 2024 with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.6% from 2025–2030.

When coupled with advanced digitization and automation technologies, cobots can leverage the constant, real-time data-sharing capabilities of all the connected devices in their network to automate and optimize manufacturing processes, reduce or replace operator workloads, and improve process performance, quality, agility, consistency, efficiency, and safety. The Lexium product portfolio from Schneider Electric is especially designed to enable these types of fully integrated smart manufacturing systems.