According to the low automation of one electric water heater production workshop and the requirement of automatic production proposed by the factory, combining the characteristic of industrial robots and the labor intensive work, the automation solution to pick electric water heater tank with robot is presented, and the electric water heater tank picking automation system is designed based on KUKA robot. Programmable logical controller (PLC) was adopted by this system as the main control system to control the robot, the hanging chain and production line, and to coordinate the movement between the devices to make it orderly. The automation system has been applied already in the electric water heater production workshop. Using robot instead of manual operations that can improve the production efficiency of the workshop, reduce the labor cost, and promote the construction of factory automation, and the desire goal of the automation system design is achieved.