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Actuators: Driving Lean Manufacturing

In the industrial world, few concepts are catching on as quickly as lean manufacturing. I constantly read and hear on blogs and radio shows about the importance of “leanness” as industry works to right itself in the wake of the financial crisis. At the heart of lean manufacturing is waste reduction. In modern industry, waste reduction often involves automation. Automation depends on actuators. I suppose one could say, then, that if lean manufacturing is helping to make industry stronger, one could also say that linear actuators are

Allow me to explain. Lean manufacturing, which is also sometimes called lean enterprise, is the practice of making as many efforts as possible to reduce waste during the production of a product or the execution of a service. Lean manufacturing is catching on quickly in the United States because it saves money without sacrificing product quality. Automation makes this possible, and actuators make automation possible.

Automation is an integral part of many lean manufacturing strategies; it reduces costs in terms of worker remuneration and in terms of reduced worker-related defects. All automated equipment requires actuation devices to create and control the movement of the equipment’s parts. This is true in automotive assembly lines, automated textile manufacturing equipment, automated laser cutting systems and many other examples of automated equipment. Linear actuators, rotary actuators and many other actuator types are essential parts of these automated equipment varieties because they are responsible for the creation and control of motion in the moving parts of automated equipment.

As long as automation remains an important part of transforming industry, actuators will also remain essential industrial utilities.