BOOSTING COMPETITIVENESS
Wherever they are deployed, robots improve consistency of quality and of flow - both of which allow a company to competitively manufacture products for the global market. The small-footprint, easy-to-program, flexible and affordable cobots play a vital role in democratizing robotic automation so that virtually any business anywhere can use them to boost their competitiveness, especially important for SMEs, where cobots can offer flexibility and productivity gains needed to compete with larger rivals.
Furthermore, robots are enabling companies in high-cost countries to reshore parts of their operations previously outsourced to low-cost countries, bringing back jobs and/or creating new ones. When companies become more competitive, they – and their suppliers and other interdependent businesses – grow, creating new jobs of all kinds.
THE RETURN OF THE HUMAN TOUCH
Other trends such as mass personalization - with consumers asserting their preference for products that display a “human touch” - requires the form of advanced process knowledge that robots cannot obtain. This means that there is no place for completely automated, “workerless” factories in the world.
On the contrary, these types of “Industry 4.0” environments will play a vital role in certain types of manufacturing and other processes for a very long time to come. But because that role will always be limited, and because the demand for products made with a human touch will continue to rise, we expect a much lower negative impact on employment than what the prophets of doom are predicting.
In conclusion, robots, and cobots, in particular, create more and often better-paying jobs than they replace, improve productivity and increase competitiveness – all excellent reasons for policymakers to promote the use of robots by upgrading employee skills through retraining and other educational initiatives and to avoid erecting barriers to their adoption, such as taxing or otherwise increasing the cost of robots.