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So says Mike Wilson, MD of Kuka Robotics and chair of BARA, the British Automation and Robot Association. “It’s not a technology question, but a challenge to management attitudes,” he says.
While the rest of the world is installing “significant numbers of robots in their manufacturing businesses, here in the UK, we’re something like 22nd in the league table”. Considering Britain is the ninth-largest manufacturing nation, this inconsistency presents a management headache. “We ought to be further up the table in terms of our use of robot technology.”
Change the mindset
The UK’s position cannot be explained by a single factor, especially given that “solutions are available both from UK robot manufacturers as well as overseas. The problem is the mindset. In the UK we’re proud of the fact that we keep a lot of our old machines running, while in somewhere like Germany they’re proud of the fact that they’ve installed new ones.
“What this says to me is that we’re not investing in new facilities or equipment that will be more productive, that will make our businesses more competitive in world markets.” In other words, it’s time to throw out ‘legacy’ technology and replace it with state-of-the-art robots.
UK manufacturing, says Wilson, has a historical culture of short-term payback criteria that amounts to “people using people, rather than buying machinery. What this comes down to is our managers not thinking about where they want to be a decade down the line. They’re thinking more about next year and less about investing in the longer-term future. This issue was around before we’d even heard of Brexit, and it will remain so unless something changes.”
Change, on the face of it, is straightforward. “We all know what we’ve got to do... We’ve got to change the way managers think, the way purchasing decisions are made.” The challenge is how to go about persuading manufacturers to invest in robots. “You can do this in a number of different ways,” says Wilson. “The people we concentrate on are those who have already contacted us. That’s because they have, by definition, made some sort of step towards contemplating their future. With these people, we can look at their applications and make suggestions about what can be done.”
Explain the benefits
“Obviously, it is much harder to assist with manufacturers who haven’t made that initial step in changing their approach to how they do things. And yet, because most automation businesses in the UK are relatively small, we can concentrate on opening new doors.”
The biggest stumbling block for creating a wider uptake of robotics in engineering isn’t the engineers themselves, says Wilson, who tend to understand the benefits of increased automation within industry. “It’s the people who hold the purse strings, which means that we’ve got to try to find a way of putting the message to them.”
This can even involve talking with bank managers at a regional level, “so that, when they are having conversations with finance directors, they can see what the benefits of integrating robotics really are. We’re trying to encourage them to say to the finance management level that they in turn should be encouraging their engineers to come forward to justify their case for automation, because that’s the future of their business. Unfortunately, we’ve not been completely successful in that. So we need to keep pushing.”
Wilson says that, while the top 20% of the UK’s manufacturers are “beacons” of what can be achieved in industry, the problem lies with the remaining 80%, “and the challenge there is that we don’t necessarily know just how far behind we are compared with the rest of Europe where robot technologies are being applied. Unless the broad spread of British manufacturing recognises that it needs to change, being competitive will always be an uphill battle.”
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