Automate or die warns robotics expert

And to make matters worse says Stirling Paatz, managing director at Totnes-based robot integrator Barr & Paatz, demand for robots is also increasing in the low wage economies of Eastern Europe and South East Asia, India and Russia, all of whom he says are seeking to reduce production costs, increase output and enhance quality by turning increasingly to flexible automation. Industrial robots are recognised as the key components in the drive toward automation and represent one of the quickest ways of boosting productivity and reducing labour costs, he says, but the UK continues to lag behind most other industrialised nations, with robot shipments to this country down, and, aside from the automotive sector, only sporadic adoption of flexible automation. "If we accept robot density as an accurate indicator of automation, then with less than 100 robots per 100,000 people employed in our manufacturing industry, we are below almost every other advanced or emerging nation," he says. "Whether that is due to traditional suspicions that robots cost jobs, to shareholders favouring dividends over capital investment or simply that we were beguiled by the notion that we are now a service economy, with no need to actually make things, is difficult to determine. But how many more old-fashioned factories will go out of business in this country, before we grasp the nettle that is automation and invest in our manufacturing sector? Starkly, it is now a matter of automate or die, because only the leanest and fittest producers will survive in the global marketplace."