Robotic poetry in motion Yaskawa is a global technology group that is the world’s largest provider of robotics and motion control systems. In Europe the company continues to see strong growth with additional capacity for its ‘Motoman’ robotics created by the opening of its new high-tech production facilities in Slovenia. Philip Yorke reports.
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ounded in Japan in 1915, Yaskawa has provided industrial automation processes for the mining, mechanical engineering and toolmaking sectors for over 100 years. This is in addition to offering high-tech processes for the automotive, packaging, textile and semi-conductor industries. With more than 18,000 employees and over 60 subsidiaries worldwide, the group achieves annual sales volumes of over 4 billion Yen. The broad range of Yaskawa’s business activities covers drives, motion controls, robotics systems and engineering, as well as information technology. This makes it one of the few global players able to supply advanced components and solutions for virtually all the world’s industries from a single source.
New centre of excellence Following two years of design and construction, Japanese technology group Yaskawa has now opened its state-of-the-art European robotics centre of excellence at Kočevje, in Slovenia. Yaskawa started European production of its Motoman robots in Japan at the end of 2018 and has since seen expediential demand. The latest European investment is around 25 million euros. The new plant supplements the company’s existing production facilities in Japan and China and will satisfy about 80 per cent of the European demand for Motoman robots. At the official opening ceremony earlier this year, a total of 13 representatives of the Yaskawa management and politicians cut the ribbon met to inaugurate the company’s first European robot manufacturing facility. The 300 invited guests included Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Sarec, EU Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc and other celebrities from Slovenia and all over Europe. “Slovenia and Japan are bound by a long tradition of economic cooperation. I am convinced that this factory 60 Industry Europe
will further strengthen our cooperation in future,” said Prime Minister Sarec in Kočevje and promised: “We will do our best to ensure that Slovenia remains an attractive investment location.”
Responding to high demand With the third global production facility for Motoman industrial robots, Yaskawa is responding to the significant rise in demand in Europe and the EMEA region. In his opening address Masahiro Ogawa, Executive Officer of YASKAWA Electric Corp. and General Manager Robotics Division, explained: “Our goal is to shorten supply chains and delivery times, to enable us to react faster to regional market requirements and to our customers’ wishes – not only with the new plant, but also with a major European robotics development centre.” Bruno Schnekenburger, CEO & President of YASKAWA Europe, added: “With this investment we want to further strengthen direct contacts with our customers in Europe and work even more closely on the path to Industry 4.0, not least through first-class customer service.” The advanced robots to be manufactured in Kočevje will be the current Motoman GP series with a payload of 7 to 225 kg. The GP series includes compact and extremely efficient handling robots for high-speed joining, packaging and general handling applications. “GP” stands for “General Purpose“, also for diverse applications. The new 6-axis robots are true productivity drivers. The new facility has a total gross area of over 12,000 m², of which 10,000 m² are dedicated to production. The new factory building offers capacity for the manufacture of up to 10,000 Motoman robots per year. The new building was designed by the Slovenian
