March 2019

COMMENT n STATISTICS: DO THE NUMBERS ADD UP? There has recently been an interesting example of the risks of relying too heavily on statistics without digging into what lies behind them. As we report in our news section, the British Automation and Robot Association (Bara) recently revealed that the number of industrial robots sold in the UK fell by 15% during 2018 compared to the previous year. The UK already lags behind most of its industrial rivals in adopting robots and Bara’s latest figures show that we are in danger of slipping even further behind. We now have just 42 robots installed per 10,000 non-automotive industrial workers. Germany has more than four times as many. It is a perfect storm. At a time when the stream of low-cost workers from elsewhere in Europe is slowing down dramatically, we are making less use of a technology that could help to boost our dismal productivity figures. But wait. A few days after Bara revealed its depressing figures, there was an announcement fromMesse Munich, the organiser of the Automatica show in Germany, that the number of industrial robots in the UK had actually increased for the third year in a row, soaring by 31% to 2,300 machines. Using figures from the International Federation of Robots, it reported that the UK, actually has 85 industrial robots per 10,000 manufacturing employees, ranking it 15th in the European league of industrial robot users. So, how do we explain such apparent disparities?Well, for a start, Messe Munich used IFR figures for 2017, when it did indeed appear that UK robot sales were on a roll with several years of continuous, healthy expansion. Bara’s figures show that this growth went into reverse the following year. Then, the IFR figures include the automotive sector which has always been way ahead of the rest of UK industry in adopting robots. But with the recent slump in investment in the UK automotive sector and Honda’s decision to close its Swindon plant, the UK’s automotive figures will probably look less rosy in the years ahead. Messe Munich has also been conducting its own survey – of the attitudes to robots among manufacturing employees in the UK and in six other industrialised countries. In each country, it quizzed 1,000 workers and the results make fascinating reading. It found, for example, that 83% of UK workers expect robots to take on work that is unhealthy for humans (such as lifting heavy loads), 77% expect them to take over work with hazardous materials, 72% expect them to take on monotonous factory work, and 71% expect them to create new opportunities for education and training. Turning to collaborative robots, 70% of the UK workers surveyed believe that human-machine collaboration will make UK companies more competitive, 68% think that working with cobots that don’t need protective fences will improve manufacturing, and 52% say that digitalisation and robotics will bring back jobs that that were previously located abroad. While it is interesting (and unusual) to see manufacturing workers surveyed in this way, digging deeper throws up some questions about the methodology. The workers were asked to rate various options on a six-point scale from“completely unimportant”to“very important”. To get its figures, Messe Munich lumped together the responses from 4 to 6. If only the top two categories were used in the question about robots taking on monotonous work, for example, the response drops from 72% to 44%. So, again, it’s all down to how you interpret the statistics. Tony Sacks, Editor | TC12-02E | www.beckhoff.co.uk/Industrie40 Beckhoff provides the ideal foundational technologies for Industrie 4.0 and Internet of Things (IoT) applications via standard PC-based control. With the TwinCAT engineering and control software, machine control systems can be extended to support big data applications, cloud communication, predictive mainte- nance, as well as comprehensive analytical functions to increase production efficiency. As a system-integrated solution, TwinCAT IoT supports standardised protocols for cloud communication and enables the easy integration of cloud services right from the ma- chine engineering stage. In addition to fault analysis and predictive maintenance, TwinCAT Analytics offers numerous opportunities to optimise machines and systems in terms of energy consumption and process sequences. Machine control for Industrie 4.0 with TwinCAT Microsoft Azure™ Amazon Web Services TwinCAT Services MQTT AMQP OPC UA