Setting Records and Taking Names (Not Jobs)

Feb 18, 2016

Industrial robots are helping to create a wide variety of new jobs such as robotic engineers, developers, manufacturers, maintainers, and more. This is evidenced by the numbers that were put out by the Robotic Industries Association that recognized the numbers in robotics remain strong and these automated solutions are bringing improvements to not just productivity but also product quality.

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The Robot­ic Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion recent­ly shared a report about the new records that have been set by robot orders and ship­ments in North America. 

We’re encour­aged by the con­tin­ued strength in the North Amer­i­can robot­ics mar­ket,” said Jeff Burnsetin, pres­i­dent of RIA. The inter­est in robot­ics remains strong not just in North Amer­i­ca, but all over the world, as com­pa­nies rec­og­nize that robots can help them improve pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, prod­uct qual­i­ty, and flexibility.

Since 2014, the robots ordered from North Amer­i­ca have increased 14% in units and 11% in dol­lars; while the amount of ship­ments to North Amer­i­ca are up 10% in units and 9% in dol­lars. RIA is esti­mat­ing that around 260,000 robots are now being used in fac­to­ries nation­wide, which is third to Japan and Chi­na in robot use.

In spite of the steady increase in robot pro­duc­tion, we need not be con­cerned about the job threat some think robots present. Today there are more oppor­tu­ni­ties than ever before in the robot­ics indus­try. The con­tin­u­ing growth in robot­ics is open­ing many new job oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who can pro­gram, install, run, and main­tain robots. In fact, if you look clos­er at the jobs dis­cus­sion, automa­tion is help­ing to save and cre­ate jobs. A lot of com­pa­nies tell us they wouldn’t be in busi­ness with­out robot­ics and relat­ed automa­tion” states Bernstein. 

Ulti­mate­ly, robots will be a huge job cre­ator as they free humans up to do new work, instead of hard labor that once was nec­es­sary. We can relate this to the agri­cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion that was able to lib­er­ate Amer­i­cans to pur­sue a wide range of more advanced job call­ings off of the farm. Or per­haps com­pare it to the inven­tion of the inter­net; where two decades ago most were unaware of it and it now has not only vast­ly ben­e­fit­ed and con­nect­ed the world, but also cre­at­ed mil­lions of jobs for Amer­i­cans alone. His­to­ry has shown that suc­cess is dri­ven by dynam­ic inno­va­tions and con­stant change that lib­er­ate humans from back break­ing, time-con­sum­ing labor, and allow for more invest­ment in new com­pa­nies and ideas of the future.

A study by Upp­sala Uni­ver­si­ty and Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, by Georg Graetz and Guy Michael, also reit­er­at­ed that the fear of robot job replace­ment doesn’t hold much ground. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and employ­ment were com­pared between the years 1993 and 2007, when robots were not near­ly as advanced as today, and found that despite ubiq­ui­tous dis­cus­sions of robots’ poten­tial impact, there is almost no sys­tem­at­ic empir­i­cal evi­dence on their eco­nom­ic effects.”

So here’s to you robots…for doing the hard work and prov­ing that automa­tion inno­va­tions can indeed rep­re­sent new and con­tin­u­al job creation. 

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the robots at Robot­worx or any of the tra­di­tion­al indus­tri­al robots avail­able from the com­pa­nies, con­tact Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and ABB. Our staff will work with you to help you design and build the best robot­ic sys­tem for you and your facility.

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