Even before the 2020 outbreak of Covid-19, the integration of robotics into manufacturing and distribution companies had been a goal many had researched and implemented to a degree. But the need to improve worker safety this year has seen a major increase in plans to adopt automation and robotics.

“Prior to the advent of COVID-19, manufacturing suffered from tight labor markets and eyed robotics and automation to bolster efficiency and reduce costs. According to the MHI report on the supply chain in 2020, the adoption rate for robotics and automation increased more than any other supply chain technology between 2019 and 2020. Adoption clocked in at 32% and 39% adoption, respectively,” IoT World noted.

There has been a number of obstacles to widespread adoption of robotics.

1. The cost - large-scale companies may have the budget to adopt, while smaller businesses may not have the budget.

2. HR departments and unions have been against robotics as they see it as a replacement of workers.

3. The type of work robots can do for specific manufacturing.

Some industries had already started to explore the option as labor needs became harder to fill, as job opportunities had increased in 2019 and unemployment numbers were at an all-time low.

Prior to the pandemic, an Oxford Economics study had postulated that by 2030 20 million manufacturing jobs globally could be replaced by robotics.  But the report also “shows that the current wave of robotization tends to boost productivity and economic growth, generating new employment opportunities at a rate comparable to the pace of job destruction. We estimate that a 1% increase in the stock of robots per worker in the manufacturing sector leads to 0.1% boost to output per worker across the wider workforce”.

John Santagate, vice president at Körber Supply Chain, sees the increased use of e-commerce during the pandemic may change the way people buy things and that robots can help fulfillment centers optimize worker productivity and address this uptick in orders.

The Oxford report noted that only about 5% of jobs will be completely taken over by automation and robotics. The report sees three major reasons for the growth of robot and automation use.

1. Robots are becoming cheaper than humans - actually the cost of the components have decreased significant while labor costs have increased significantly.

2. Robots are becoming more capable - as the technology improves and robots become more adaptable, smaller and AI helps their ability to learn.

3.  Demand for manufactured goods is rising, and China is investing in robots to position itself as the global manufacturing leader - as manufacturing automates more, just like the benefits of the assembly line in the early 1900s, labor can become more efficient.

While some jobs will be lost, others will be created, robots can reduce “unit-production costs that, in a competitive market, translate into lower prices and effectively raise the real spending power of consumers. Therefore, the same robots that displace jobs in manufacturing also create employment across the wider economy,” the report suggests.