Who are the giants of robots who rejoice in the automation of industries. Economist Report
After years of hesitation, companies are embracing automation. Here's how and to whom they are addressed. The deepening of the weekly The Economist
GM head Mary Barra took the virtual stage on January 12 to launch BrightDrop. The automaker's new logistics division will sell unsexy stuff like delivery vans and self-contained electric pallets for use in warehouses. It's hardly the stuff to drive crazy.
Suppress the yawn, because Ms. Barra's announcement is the latest sign of a quiet but powerful revolution. “The convergence of software and hardware comes to factories in every industry we serve,” says Blake Moret, chief executive officer of Rockwell Automation, an industry giant. Her company operates a large-scale manufacturing facility at its Milwaukee headquarters to demonstrate that automation allows it to make competitive products despite high labor costs in America. Its stock price has risen 28% over the past year, nearly double the S&P 500 index of large American companies. Other suppliers have done even better.
The bosses pride themselves on automating their operations for years, without much being seen. Hernan Saenz of Bain, a consulting firm, believes that US companies will invest $ 10 trillion in automation by 2030. Nigel Vaz, chief executive of Publicis Sapient, a large digital consulting firm, says the recession offers bosses the perfect cover. “The relentless pressure to achieve short-term financial results from investors has been temporarily suspended,” he says. “Businesses are not going back to before the pandemic, but they are completely rethinking the way they work,” says Susan Lund, co-author of an upcoming report from McKinsey Global Institute, a think-tank. A recent survey by the institute's sister consulting firm found that two-thirds of global companies are doubling down on automation – writes The Economist.
Robots are the most important winners. Robo Global, a research company, predicts that by the end of 2021 the global installed base of robots in the factory will exceed 3.2 million units, doubling the level of 2015. The global industrial robotics market is expected to grow from 45 billion. dollars in 2020 to $ 73 billion in 2025.
Says Michael Cicco, the head of American operations at Fanuc, a Japanese robot builder: “With supply chains destroyed, manufacturers have been forced to find ways to build flexibility. Companies that reorganized production tried to offset the high cost of human labor with the engineered type. And robots are becoming much more capable. The most skilled can now pick up delicate objects such as individual strawberries ”.
Fanuc has seen a surge in demand for material handling equipment and "collaborative robots" designed to interact with people. These "cobots" are particularly useful in e-commerce, which covid-19 has given a huge boost. The pandemic has led, according to one estimate, consumer goods companies to increase buffer stocks by about 5%. To counter this trend, companies are buying robots for use in warehouses, made by companies like GreyOrange and Kiva (which Amazon acquired in 2012 to help build e-commerce).
At this time, cobots help social distancing. But, says Dwight Klappich of Gartner, a research firm, robots that move goods to workers will also benefit post-pandemic productivity. Luke Jensen of Britain's Ocado, a pioneer in robotics and online food, insists that his low-profit industry must find ways to satisfy the recent spate of online orders with less manpower. His company already serves the majority of its UK customers from just three highly automated sites. Kroger, a large American food distributor, is now expanding its roll-out of Ocado equipment in both warehouses and retail outlets.
A survey of supply chain executives released on January 13 by Blue Yonder, another consulting firm, found that the share of companies with fully automated fulfillment centers could increase by 50% within a year.
Stuart Harris of Emerson of America's Emerson, a large automation company, says “pervasive sensing” – which combines artificial intelligence and smart sensors – helped his company grow remote monitoring revenues by 25% last year.
Emerson's customers range from a Singapore chemical factory to a Latin American mine. Peter Terwiesch of Abb. Abb., A large Swiss-Swedish industrial technology company, reports a boom in teleoperation systems, from seagoing vessels to paper mills. His company's annual sales of these products have doubled to $ 400 million from pre-pandemic levels.
Drishti, an American startup, has come up with a way to apply artificial intelligence (ai) and computer vision to analyze video streams of workers on assembly lines. Marco Marinucci of Hella, a large German auto parts supplier, says his company used Drishti's kit to analyze and troubleshoot a high-volume assembly line. In this way, its production increased by 7% last year.
Publicis Sapient automated the stock forecasting of a division of a large European retailer that repeatedly found itself out of stock amid changing consumption patterns during the pandemic. The consulting firm's software enabled his client to avoid shortages of their top 100 items 98% of the time.
It is not just production plans and warehouses that are automated. Back offices too. According to one estimate, the US healthcare system could save $ 150 billion annually through paper-pushing automation. Allied Market Research, an analyst firm, expects global sales of process automation products to grow from $ 1.6 billion in 2019 to nearly $ 20 billion in 2027.
In December ui Path, a Romanian start-up at the forefront of the area, submitted an initial public offering. It started with a market value of $ 225 million. On January 12, Workato, an American rival, said it had raised $ 110 million in new funding.
Last year Alibaba, China's largest e-emporium, unveiled the results of a more ambitious project, called Xunxi ("fast rhino"). Alain Wu, who manages Xunxi, explains that this has involved digitizing and integrating entire value chains, from product design, to parts procurement and manufacturing, logistics and after-sales service. This allowed merchants on Alibaba's e-commerce platforms to fulfill custom orders in days, eliminating excess inventory. The time from production to delivery has been reduced from several months to fifteen days.
Skeptics note that history is littered with examples of technologies that are supposed to have changed the world and that have captivated leaders, only to fail to live up to the promise. (Remember blockchain?) Once covid-19 is defeated, companies' enthusiasm for new technologies may diminish. Those who have missed the opportunity to automate – as many have done because they were busy simply trying to survive the pandemic recession – will lose the coverage Mr. Vaz talks about.
Optimists are counting on the fact that this time it might really be different. In the past, the biggest returns from automation have been obtained from giant, well-capitalized companies. Today, technological advances and business models allow smaller ones to enjoy similar benefits. This should increase the demand for smart systems and, over time, further reduce their costs. And so on, in a virtuous and completely automated circle.
(Extract from the press review of Eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/automazione-industrie-emerson-alibaba/ on Sat, 16 Jan 2021 07:01:16 +0000.