Is The Lack Of Robot Technicians Holding Back The Rollout of More Robots in the US?

What is holding back a full "Robot Revolution" in US Manufacturing? An MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future asked that question and found some interesting reasons. For years, we have been told that the robots were coming, but walk into most manufacturing facilities today, you will not see many robots.

Some big manufacturers are indeed making investment in what could be seen as "lights out" operations, others however are being much more hesitant in making the move to investment in robotics and automation. Even with many firms looking to re-shore production back to the States due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the big push to make the investment in robots on the production floor is just not there yet.

The reason, especially among small and medium-enterprise (SMEs), may be in part a concern by SME leaders that they will not have the trained workforce to properly use the robot to its fullest. The cost of obtaining the trained workforce on top of the cost of the robot itself, just makes the total investment too much for the SME to justify. So do we have a chicken and egg problem in rolling out more robotics in US Manufacturing? Are firms not deploying robots into their operations because they don't have the workforce already on hand that can maximize the ROI on the investment? Or do they not want to get the robot because they will then need to invest in training to justify the purchase?

While larger firms can absorb the costs of both the robot application itself and the training of their team members on it, SMEs can struggle to and therefore do not make either the investment in either the workforce or the robotics. So what can be done? Do we make public investments in the workforce and hope that SMEs hire from that pool of workers? What ensures that the workers are trained on what the SMEs need? Most CEOs and policy makers agree that for US Manufacturing to compete on the world stage, more robotics and automation needs to be introduced. However, if there is not a feasible way to address the financial concerns that SMEs have around robotics when it comes to finding workers that can utilize the robot to the fullest, we are not going to get any movement on the bigger issue of US competitiveness.

The Growing Productivity Gap

When it comes to manufacturing in the United States, SMEs represent 98.4% of all manufacturing firms in the country, and they employ 43% of all the manufacturing workers according to the US Census. Of concern though is SMEs are falling behind their larger manufacturing counterparts when it comes to productivity. The MIT team pointed out that in the 1970's, productivity by large firms was only 22% higher than that of SMEs. However by 2012, the productivity gap had jumped to 96%. If the larger firms are the only ones investing heavily in robotics and automation, this gap will only continue to grow for 1.6% of the firms.

What the MIT team noticed in their multiple year study was larger firms added not only more robotics and automation to their facilities, but grew their head counts at the same time. On the other hand, very few SMEs added robotics to their operations. This is not to say that SMEs did not upgrade their manufacturing technologies or grow their staffs. Many of them made investments in technology like CNC machines and similar pieces of equipment while adding head counts. However, when it came to robots the MIT team saw very few appear over the course of their study when looking at participating SMEs.

What were some of the reasons cited by the SMEs on why they were not making the investment in robotics? One reason was how difficult it was to repurpose and reprogram the robot for other purposes after the initial deployment. That most SMEs were high mix/low production shops, they needed flexibility to pivot quickly from job to job. So unless they had a long term / high volume production run, they couldn't justify the expense of the robot. This is because the robot itself is only about a quarter of the total deployment cost when other items like end effectors, sensors, safety items, installation costs, and then training costs are added in. So if the SME could figure out ways to control repurposing costs, the argument for more robots in their operations could start to make more sense.

Workforce Development: "Houston We Have A Problem"

When SMEs were asked by the MIT researchers about what skills they looked for in an individual, most of them did not stress a specific certification or degree, but soft skills like "showing up for work on-time" and having a "work ethic." If a candidate had those soft skills, the employer felt that could train them for what the company needed. This was not to say they would not seek out people that had experience using a specific piece of equipment like a CNC machine through employment at another company or by completing a short course at a trade school, it was just that "pieces of paper" were becoming less important to them.

The MIT team also found a growing frustration by SMEs with their local community colleges and how pointless the Associate degrees were for their needs. The owner of a metalworking firm did not mince words in his assessment of his local technical college:

“They have beautiful CNC and welding equipment, but they don’t really train anyone... We tried to get them into older machining equipment, but no one was interested. They’re too busy with flashy stuff like 3D printing. But we’re in mass production. I can’t even make tooling less expensive with additive manufacturing. I don’t need kids trained on 3D printing.”

This skills disconnect between academia and employers is nothing new. There have been many calling for academia to start to evolve to the needs of employers that are going to hire their students. The pandemic may finally be the catalyst to force this change as many are needing to be reskilled or upskilled for jobs created by the business shifts created in a post-COVID world. It is now clearer than ever that individuals will have numerous "jobs" over the course of their lifetime even if they do stay with the same company. Lifelong learning will be the new norm as technology keeps advancing and as new services and products are created. The "piece of paper" that you earn from any institution will now be more like a car the moment you drive it off the lot. It will start depreciating in value, because what you learned then will not be relevant in the next few years. One will always need to be updating their skill sets.

This rapid changing need to reskill workers has forced many SMEs to bring their training in-house and do more on-the-job training. As one manager stated, if the candidate has "basic math skills, basic aptitude and attitude, and people who show up on time and play well with others," he can train them on what is needed by the company. So what role does academia now play when it comes to workforce development for manufacturers?

Some SMEs have been successful in teaming with their local academic institutions to build programs that work for them. There are some alliances like the Alliance for Working Together Foundation that have had success in working with institutions to develop programs that better align with their member companies. Unfortunately, there are not enough of these types of alliances across the country for all of the SMEs to align with local academics to address their workforce issues.

Will We Be "Out Automated" By Other Countries?

The growth of installed robots in the US has slowed over the years. From 2017 to 2019, the US went from 200 robots installed per 10,000 workers in the manufacturing industry to 228. That is only 14% growth over 2 years. Compare this to South Korea, which was already way ahead of the US and the rest of the world, that grew at 20% over the same time period. More concerning was China's robot density growing at 93% using the same criteria. If the goal by US policy makers is to re-shore manufacturing jobs back from countries like China, having them "out automate" us and make their manufacturing even more productive (and still lower cost) through robotics is going to make re-shoring an uphill fight. To re-shore jobs, we need manufacturers to invest more in robotics to make their operations more productive. We need the productivity gap between large manufacturing firms and SMEs to shrink.

As stated earlier, manufacturing SMEs in the US make up almost 99% of the manufacturing firms in country and nearly half of the employment. If we are going to move the needle on having more robot installs in US and shirk the productivity gap, it will need to take place at the SME level. So is there something that government institutions can do to address the issues that are holding so many SMEs back?

Countries like Germany and China have developed national strategic plans to support their manufacturing sectors especially SMEs to help them to invest in automation and robotics. These plans include employment policies and programs around workforce development. The US has numerous programs at both the Federal and State level like Manufacturing USA and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) in the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). However, amongst the SMEs that the MIT team interviewed they found that the vast majority of them did not participate in them.

This was interesting because the researchers found that those companies that did participate in these types of programs not only got the support they needed in key areas like workforce development, they connected with other SMEs in the program to build mini-support ecosystems to lean on in other areas of support. This was similar to the success stated earlier in alliances like the Alliance for Working Together Foundation. The mantra of "We are all in this together" does appear to be a path forward out of many of these issues. The key will be how do we create more participation in existing alliances and partnership and creating new ones in areas of the country that are lacking.

Avoiding Stationary Robot Syndrome

The report from the MIT researchers provided some great insights into what is holding back most SMEs from making the investment in robotics. SMEs still see making an investment in robotics as a risky proposition. Unless they have a large production order that is going to put the robot into use for a long time, they simply can't justify all of the costs associated with it - including the training costs. There is a strong fear that the robot will become a paper weight after the job it was initially bought for ends. A stationary robot is not making money for anyone.

This means that when it comes to workforce development efforts, there needs to be training on how employees can quickly repurpose the robot for a new job. This not only includes having skills to reprogram the robot, but skills that include designing and building new end effectors for the new job at hand, resetting safety sensors and guarding, and even knowing how to do a new risk assessment on the redeployment. Identifying all of the skills is takes to redeploy a robot within an operation are the skills that need to be part of future workforce development efforts.

In recent years, we have seen the rise of Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) business models as a way to make robots more appealing to customers by lowering their costs to use them. We need to have more flexible training programs that allow SMEs to quickly train their team members not only on new robot deployments, but also on how to redeploy robots quickly on other tasks on the production floor. With the rise of online learning, there are definitely ways to do much of this training remotely and therefore make it national in scope. Many employees interviewed by the researchers listed YouTube as one of their go-to places to learn new skills for their jobs. If there is a will, there is a way.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

In conclusion, it is clear that automation/robotics and workforce development are two sides of the same coin. To address one, we address the other. The key is if you are looking at one side of the coin, what does that mean for the other side? We can address both sides as long as we admit both sides exist.

By addressing the growing workforce development issue, we also address the growing productivity issue. Through all that we address the re-shoring of manufacturing jobs back to the US. The MIT team did a great job of discovering what is holding back these SMEs. We just need to come up with a plan where we have ways to go from egg to chicken and chicken to egg.