Given all the interest in the robots that we have seen in the last decade, a recent report of the Association for Advancing Automation (A3) Noting that a drop in the North American robotics market was not too surprising. The A3 report showed a drop in the two ordered units and income, unit orders decreasing almost 8% and income by almost 7% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
In its report, A3 highlighted winds, inflation and increased borrowing costs as the main reasons for slowdown. But I would add some additional factors to that.
One of them, I believe, was the uncertainty of the elections. For most of my life, the general vision of most economists was that it was not really important that was president with regard to markets or economic performance in the United States. And without getting bogged down in certain analyzes of statistics from the Bureau of Labor or GDP data or market performance which tends to show that it has made a difference – at least since the Second World War – it is clear that political tensions have increased insofar as general political normality, those of us, more than 45 years or 50 years has lived for a large part of our life. And I believe that this change, without necessarily having an impact on long -term economic performance, most certainly influences the short -term decision -making, especially in an electoral year like 2024. And I think that we now see it, not only in its effect on the robot market, but in the recent performance of the manufacturing sector as a whole.
Another factor that had an impact on the robot market in 2024 is the trend of natural slowdown which follows a purchase period. The robot market has experienced enormous growth in recent years, so it is expected that we can see a certain relaxation. After all, what increases must lower, of course, from certain suspicious annual growth forecasts that I see of certain groups of industry analysts.
A problem that potentially contributes to this natural slowdown after a big wave of purchase has been reported in a Podcast discussion I had with IRA Moskowitz from Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing Institute. In this discussion, I will have noted that he had seen several challenges with the implementations of robots in small and medium manufacturers, which constitute the majority of manufacturing operations in the United States, he said that most of these manufacturers often do not have the technical staff necessary to fully support the implementations of robots. Consequently, one of the most common things he saw in these small manufacturing facilities is a robot arm seated in the area because the manufacturer thought they needed but did not have the resources to put it wisely or maintain it.
Where the purchase of robots is from top to bottom
Although the overall sales of robots decreased during the first half of 2024, A3 also stressed that this drop in purchase of robots was not a problem of sharing. In fact, industries such as food, packaged consumer goods and life sciences were the main industries that led robots sales at the beginning of 2024.
According to A3, orders for robots from food products and consumer goods increased by almost 86% and revenues increased by 56% in the first half of 2024. And the life sciences industry experienced almost 48% of robots orders contributing to an increase of almost 87% of this industry.
Two recent cases on the growing use of robots in the food industry can be observed in the coverage of the world of automation of The use of chef’s robotics technology by Amy cuisine And El Pinto Foods Use of robots To increase its packaging efficiency.
And while orders for robots in the automotive industry remained positive with an increase of 14% in the first half of 2024, it was in the semiconductor and electronics industry that the biggest success has occurred, robot controls lowering 40%.
Robot technology continues to progress
Again, I maintain that this drop in robots orders is more a temporary reflection of several factors with an impact on the market than any type of negative reflection on the use of the robot or their manufacturing capacities in general. After all, the advances we have seen in robot technologies in the past decade are just the start of what we will see in the years to come.
Consider what we have seen introduced in recent weeks only:
- Universal robots Now offers a 5 kilograms increasing the payload capacity to its UR20 and UR30 robots via a software update.
- Robotics olis added new Remote access capacities This allows it not only to assess the robot operations remotely, but to monitor, diagnose and remotely debug the robot cells. With this software, users can monitor and define alerts for predefined execution parameters via the PLC, including I / OS, registers and personalized tags. Olis Robotics says that this real -time access to PLC data essentially closes the loop on video diagnostics based on industrial automation systems using robots.
- ConventionThe company behind the manufacturing automation platform based on the cloud to allow small medium-sized manufacturers to automate production operations more easily, now works with Robotics ABB To make the family of Robots collaborative Abb GOFA compatible with the check platform. Find out more about this partnership.
Avoid problems with robots
The main thing here is that if you plan to apply robots in your production operations, do not leave the news of this slowdown an impact on your decision. Instead, be sure to approach it as Moskowitz will go Advanced robotics for the manufacturing institute Advives you make sure not to finish with a robot arm seated in the corner of your installation.
He said manufacturers should first carry out an engineering analysis of the target production line to first check that a robot is really necessary. Then make sure you understand how the robot will interact with the rest of the line. Ira said that a robot can, of course, be used to automate almost all the steps that had been carried out by a human, but it could also disturb the way the operation works. I will advise that you really have to think about how you could reorganize the line so that the robot can operate effectively and allow the rest of your processes to work at the level you want.