As the fourth industrial revolution surges forward, it’s exerting more and more pressure on companies. Compared to the steady progress of organic evolution, revolution crushes anyone in its path too rigid to embrace new opportunities. Right now, manufacturers all over the world are having to adapt to producing increasingly customized products in decreasing batch sizes and accelerating cycles - while at the same time specialized workers are becoming harder and harder to find. This calls for extremely flexible production line layouts that don’t compromise on quality standards or assembly speeds.

That is where OMRON Corporation comes in. This leading Japanese manufacturer of automation solutions, based in Kyoto, has just announced the launch of a new line of SCARA robots that combines compact design with optimized performance. The new "i4" generation of SCARA robots not only saves installation space and is easily integrated into existing production lines - to meet the challenges of industry 4.0, the i4 line is also equipped with EtherCAT for synchronizing automation devices. This simplifies innovative assembly, inserting and mounting processes that require great precision and high throughput, while also optimizing quality control using integrated image processing.