RS and Schneider Electric Facilitate Smart Manufacturing
March 20, 2025
RS 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.
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.
Schneider Electric’s Lexium cobots, for instance, are designed to work alongside humans as part of fully integrated robotics systems that improve productivity and efficiency and reduce unplanned downtime. To that end, Lexium cobots offer a number of impactful advantages, including:
- High performance. Lexium cobots exhibit high position accuracy and accurate joint servo control and reliably perform monotonous, tedious, repetitive, and physically challenging tasks.
- Compact and lightweight aluminum form factors. Ranging from just 3–18kg (~6.5–40lbs), Lexium cobots require 30–40% less space than traditional robotic cells.
- Ruggedness. Lexium cobots robustly withstand the hazards of challenging industrial environments with standard IP54 and optional IP68 sealing.
- Safety. Lexium cobots are equipped with a series of sensors to avoid collisions with human workers and programmed to stop immediately in the event of unexpected contact, which enables harmless collaboration with humans and negates the need for safety barriers. They also have rounded edges, force limits, light weights, and optional visual protection and precise form control. Electrical safety certifications include UL1740. Functional safety certifications include ISO 13849-1, ANSI/RIA R15.06, CAN/CSA Z434, NFPA79, and CAN/CSA C22.2 No.14.
- Easy setup. Lexium cobots support plug-and-play functionality and teach-in, free-drive, and graphical programming, which — unlike traditional industrial robots — makes setup accessible to operators with virtually any skill level rather than just those with advanced computer programming skills.
- Easy integration. Lexium cobots utilize open software and hardware platforms, support External Short Messaging Entity (ESME) function blocks, vision systems, and digital twin capabilities to reduce commissioning time and ease implementation.
- Dynamic connectivity. Lexium cobots support wireless connections with tablets, a wide range of fieldbuses, and iOS, Android, and Windows platforms.
- Flexibility. Unlike traditional industrial robots, Lexium cobots are designed to support the needs of multiple projects. They can engage in both cooperative and collaborative work and are easy to move, reinstall, and reprogram.
- Cost effectiveness. The inherent flexibility of Lexium cobots delivers a better return on investment (ROI) than traditional robots, which also require secondary products like safety barriers that add to the total cost of ownership.
- Broad Application Suitability: Lexium cobots are especially well-suited for use in small- and medium-sized businesses within the automotive, electronics, and food and beverage manufacturing, metals, machining, life science, logistics, and warehouse industries. Ideal applications include pick-and-place, assembly, loading and unloading, dispensing, inspection, quality testing, machine tending, bin picking, packaging, palletizing, material handling, gluing, welding, painting, polishing, screw-driving, soldering.
Other Schneider Electric products that enable fully integrated Lexium robotics systems include high-performance multi-axis machines and dynamic servo drive technology designed to enable high-speed motion and precise positioning and software designed to unite system components into a suite of connected products. Examples include:
- Modicon motion controllers, which integrate PLC, motion, and robotics control functionalities on a single hardware platform and are built using open automation standards and protocols that enable flexibility, scalability, and ease of integration with third-party equipment.
- Lexium servo motors and drives, which are designed to satisfy a wide variety of high-performance, power, and ease of use demands in independent and synchronized motion control applications. This portfolio offers models rated for up to 24kW in addition to integrated servo drive models designed to be used as decentralized drives in machine building applications. When combined with a Modicon controller or PLC, Lexium Integrated servo drives make it easy to create complex and economical control architectures. They can also be equipped with an AC synchronous servo motor, a DC brushless motor, or a stepper motor.
- EcoStruxure Machine Expert software, an open, IoT-enabled, and interoperable platform that allows users to develop, configure, and commission the various components of Lexium robotic systems in a single software environment; enables the flow of collaborative data between smart products, robots, controls, software, and services; and is designed for intuitive operation to reduce engineering time.
- EcoStruxure Machine Expert Twin, a scalable digital twin software suite that allows users to create digital models of real machines and use those models to optimize their virtual design, virtual commissioning, and agile development and enable the parallel engineering of mechanical, electrical, and control work assignments, which can reduce time-to-market by up to 50% and decrease commissioning time by up to 60%.
