Robot expert ABB Robotics' 'Engineering an Automation Nation' event last month attracted more than 150 visitors. Held at its Milton Keynes headquarters, an event highlight was the unveiling of the company's new robot welding cell, complete with training/seminar room between two welding areas, one each given over to arc and spot welding technologies. This was shown alongside robots demonstrating machine tending and vision-based inspection.
The general theme of the event was, of course, automation, and Mike Wilson, ABB's general industry manager and additionally chairman of the British Automation and Robot Association (BARA), underlined the country's need to automate, using some international comparisons to highlight the UK's relative robot standing.
Against a positive backdrop of a resurgent manufacturing sector, with UK car factories having produced 1.5 million vehicles in 2014 (the highest since 2007) and with EEF predicting manufacturing output growth of 1.7% this year, as well as a more stable political and economic environment, says Wilson, the UK is a laggard in robot installations.
"Annual robot installation numbers in the UK have grown from 463 in the depths of recession in 2009 significantly [to 2,477 in 2012 and 2,015 in 2013], but automotive is the industry that is driving that. We are seeing relatively low growth in general industry applications – food, pharmaceuticals and aerospace, pretty much everything else, with growth rates of 7% per annum posing a challenge. Car plants are going to put robots in, but we need to find ways of encouraging everybody else to do it."
Just to give some sense of how bad 2009 was, you have to go back as far as 1982 for a lower figure (439 installations), to when UK robot sales were starting to climb as the technology was being adopted more widely.
TOP PERFORMERS ARE....
Returning to current trends, the top performing general industry sector in 2013 was 'pharmaceuticals and medical' with about 110 installations, followed by 'food, beverage and tobacco', where around 90 installations were made; then 'plastics and rubber' and 'fabricated metal products (excluding machinery)' on around 85 each, with 'aerospace and other transport' following that with below 40 and, bringing up the rear, 'industrial machinery' (including machine tending) managed around 10. Now, across seven years (2007-13), the installation in every sector varies greatly. The best year for 'industrial machinery' was 2008, when over 50 were installed, while over 40 were installed in 2012, for example.
Wilson is not too downbeat, even so: "One of the positives is that we have robots in use across all industry sectors; the challenge is that we don't have enough in each of those industry sectors." And automation is required in the UK, he stresses, due to a number of factors: competition from overseas; a strong currency making exports more expensive; rising costs (energy and materials), notwithstanding their recent decline, the general trend is always upwards; and there are skills shortages – lack of apprentices, painters and welders, and ways of addressing that need to be found.
"We cannot keep doing the same thing. We need to use resources effectively – we have been good at applying lean engineering, but we still don't use labour as effectively as we could; we still have people loading and unloading machines, we are not using their skills and attributes to add value to the product. And that's where automation comes in. It is well suited to repetitive, mundane and arduous tasks, jobs that people really don't want to do," he continues.
Drawing on figures from the International Federation of Robotics' 2014 report, Wilson highlights how the UK performs internationally on robot use, as measured by installed robots per 10,000 employees. Across six European countries, Germany is top in both automotive and non-automotive companies; the UK is bottom on both counts. Now the UK's automotive figure isn't that bad, Wilson offers – Germany's is 1,140 and the UK's is 682, so more than half Germany's figure. But in non-automotive, the ratio is 154:28, so Germany's robot density is over five times greater here.
But to ram home the message, he reveals this: "China is now installing more robots per year than any other country, so the perception that China's success is all based on [cheap] labour is going to change. And unless we do something about this, we are going to lose.
"We are very good at keeping old machines going. We need to change that; we need to be like the Germans; we need to be proud that we buy new machines, to use the latest technology to be as competitive and productive as we possibly can."
He says that there is a short-termist culture in the UK that makes it difficult to invest in automation, but quotes Henry Ford: "If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it, but don't have it."
And he adds: "Unless companies start to think longer term, have a strategy for the future regarding where they want to be in five or 10 years' time, they won't be able to make these kind of changes, put the latest equipment in place and then get the savings that result."
But there are positives, as Wilson outlines: "Government recognises robotics as one of eight technologies of strategic importance to the UK, according to Chancellor George Osbourne in a 2012 Royal Society speech. Reshoring is a great opportunity, with more companies bringing manufacturing back to the UK. This could add something like £15 billion to the UK economy by 2025. To achieve that, we have to use the latest technologies; otherwise the work will stay overseas.
"More recently, we have seen significant increases in employment, but productivity has come down and that, ultimately, will be a challenge; we are still only about 16th in the international competitiveness league and there are some major economies ahead of us, so that needs to be addressed. Finally, we face a skills gap. According to EngineeringUK, there will be some 257,000 vacancies in engineering enterprises by 2022, which means we need both more people but also that automation will be required, as we can't fill that gap with people alone."
In response, ABB is developing new technology and applications on a global basis, with this accessible locally, an example being its YuMi collaborative robot that offers broader application, as it can work with people (http://is.gd/r3pBkn).
Says Wilson: "This will open up new applications for people to work together; people doing what they are good at and robots doing what they can do best."
In addition to technology development, ABB highlighted the availability of standard solutions. These offerings are more affordable and so easier to justify, implement and use. "These [standard solutions] are suitable for those general industry customers that have less experience with automation than has, for example, the car industry," Wilson underlines.
ABB is also working with education in the UK; it has robots in over 30 universities and colleges in the UK, and it would like more. "Not because we want lots of robot engineers, but because we want lots more engineers and see that as way of attracting children in schools to engineering – robots are still sexy," he adds. And one of the developments revealed during the ABB event will have resonance with that same audience, in fact.
This concerns developments on the man-machine interaction side that see simplified robot control via a local hand unit making use of accelerometers (think Nintendo Wii) plus more comprehensive interaction via touch-screen tablet-based computers, rather than a traditional pendant. Such advances are considered attractive to a new generation, and this was another of the event's demonstrations (http://is.gd/Bl5ULp).
Using the RobotStudio online app, tablets support calibration, program testing/editing, jogging and data back-up to cloud. The company said it will develop apps, taking in smartphones, to support an ecosystem that will offer "game-changing services".
ABB is clearly moving towards industry; whether industry moves towards robot suppliers any faster remains to be seen.
First published in Machinery, June 2015
