Covid-19 Accelerates Automation Adoption
Covid-19 has brought increased visibility surrounding the importance of automation for businesses looking to maintain productivity levels whilst prioritizing the safety of their workforce during the current global pandemic. According to a recent Forrester report Covid-19 has accelerated automation investment as companies seek to not only maintain pre-covid productivity levels but seek to mitigate the risk any future crisis may pose.
The Automation Myth
You may be mistaken for believing that automation will lead to massive job losses. Whilst we are currently experiencing significant job losses, these are not automation related. The reality is only 10% of jobs are fully automatable. However, what this pandemic has shown us is that businesses need to automate so that they can safeguard their employees and adhere to social distancing guidelines. If anything, automation will play a fundamental role in accelerating our recovery from this pandemic whilst maintaining jobs and keeping workers safe.
The 3 D’s of Robotics
The need for automation has never been more evident in Ireland and other countries as they struggle to reopen their economies following lockdown. Many countries are seeing surges in the number of Corona virus outbreaks as they attempt to return to some type of normality particularly in facilities where there is a high amount of human to human contact. Robots unlike humans do not fall ill, they are not walking, talking vectors of disease. Whilst many businesses have been able to adopt a remote working model, manufacturing is one of those sectors that requires a work force to be present. Focusing on areas of the manufacturing process that are easily automatable will help business owners to mitigate the risks of this pandemic. Typically, these roles include the 3 D’s of robotics, the dull, the dangerous and the dirty jobs, relieving the workers to focus on areas of the business where they can really add value in these challenging times.
Cobots To The Rescue
Cobots offer a cost effective, scalable, and easily deployable solution that can work collaboratively with an existing workforce increasing efficiency and improving employee safety. Changing business practice to include automation will require investment and understandably business owners are cautious in investing in automation as another recession is looming. However, in order to survive this pandemic manufacturers will need to adapt to overcome it and as the saying goes fortune favours the bold. With no sign of this virus being eradicated anytime soon it is vital that business owners re-evaluate their manufacturing processes and rethink how they do business in the Covid-19 era.
Financial leasing options are now available for collaborative robotic projects, please call the team at ITS on 021 463200 to discuss.
About Us
Established in 1993, ITS (Innovative Total Solutions) has its roots in mechanical design & build engineering. ITS were the First in Ireland to put the Universal Robot (Cobots) into action and have grown to become one of the leading Automation Integrators in Ireland working along with Cobots.ie and other Robotic companies to create bespoke, customisable, unique manufacturing solutions.
