November/December 2020

n TALKING INDUSTRY What’s the future for automation after Covid? The theme of the second in the series of Talking Industry panel discussions was Increasing Automation in the post-Covid era. Chairman Andy Pye reflects on a session that set out to look forward to the opportunities of the future, but couldn't quite shake off the barriers from the past. 26 November/December 2020 www.drivesncontrols.com B efore we report on a fascinating discussion on the take-up of automation, perhaps we need to consider what we mean by automation. One question in theWebinar’s Q&A session took us back to first principles. When asked to define automation, Brendan O’Dowd (Analog Devices) said:“To me, it's everything from the simplest jig that enables you to drill holes repeatedly, all the way up to your dark factory that doesn't have a single person inside and is completely automated. It’s anything that that helps do a job more easily. “We want to take some of the dirty, dangerous jobs away from people and automate them,”he continued.“But there's a huge gap in terms of the higher skilled roles that are required to develop the systems, manage and run them and keep them operating. And making sure that you can operate automated systems safely is one of the barriers – if you have to put a big cage around everything, then it hits productivity. “The bottom line is that these are all return-on-investment decisions that are made by companies, who need to spend money upfront,” O’Dowd argued.“Machine flexibility is key. There are plenty of places where a flexible robot or cobot can do different tasks, and this is a way that you can leapfrog your competition.” Slow take-up So why is the uptake of automation so slow in the UK, compared to other countries, and what effect (if any) will the pandemic have? “As measured by the International Federation of Robotics, we’re 22nd in the world league, in terms of the uptake of robots – that's robot density, the number of robots per 10,000 workers,”the MTC’s MikeWilson said.“That's out of step with our status as the ninth-largest manufacturing nation in the world – we ought to be using more robots. “That's a potentially negative statement,”he added,“but I think there's a positive angle to it, in that, because other countries are ahead of us, they've developed the applications that we need to use. So we don't need to invent anything particularly new. We can utilise the learning from overseas and adopt the technologies that they have already developed, which should make it easier for us to implement new systems adopt more technology, and hopefully catch up. “We don't need to be world-leading in all of this,”Wilson continued. “We just need to catch up and avoid the mistakes that they made the first time they did it. So it should be easier for us going forward." He pointed to a study of UK manufacturing produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Manufacturing Group a few years ago which concluded that“in the UK, we like to keep our old machines running. Whereas in Germany, they are very proud that they bought new ones. And because of that, we're not investing in the latest technologies, and as a result, advanced manufacturing equipment isn’t getting the investment that maybe it should.” This issue generated considerable discussion in the chat sessionthta ran alongside the live debate, and subsequently on LinkedIn. One comment came from a robotics consultant, John Roberts:“I have been lucky to visit lots of manufacturing plants across Europe,”he said.“If you visit a German factory you will be shown the latest piece of equipment which – the host will proudly say – represents the cutting edge of technology. Visit a UK factory and you will likely be shown a machine that is 50 years old and ‘still going.’What’s strange is the same person will have the latest phone in their pocket and a shiny new German car parked outside. Why do we in the UK sweat our production machine assets far beyond their useful life?” Vaibhav Boricha of Vikaso agreed with MikeWilson.“I also think one of the biggest barriers is the cultural bit,”he said.“Nor do we need to reinvent the wheel. It is absolutely not necessary to come up with something new every time, as long as the UK can increase its rate of deployment, and start to adopt what other countries – or perhaps other companies – have already trialled and tested.” One point of view is that, much of the UK’s manufacturing centres around highly regulated industries such as defence, medical and aerospace. These industries typically use well-proven“legacy”equipment to minimise risk. The validation of new equipment is time-consuming and expensive, or even deemed an unnecessary risk.