Strategic view on cobot Deployment in Assembly 4.0 systems

Collaborative robots (cobots) are intended to physically interact with humans in a shared workspace. While cobots research proliferated in the recent decade, only scant attention was given to the strategic consideration of deploying them. The obvious strategic consideration is related to economic cost-benefits trade-off. However, the economic decision is tightly tied to the technology improvement rate, as cobots lifetime expectancy strongly depend on the technological developments. In this regard, the difference between different types of cobots may be dramatic. Another strategic issue is the sociological effects including the reaction of the operators and unions to cobot deployment. This paper reviews the related literature and proposes a model to analyze the underlying factors and facilitate the decision making process of: where and when to deploy which cobots.