"All of manufacturing is extremely conservative about new technology," Engelberger explains. "One of the blows to me in my career was to find out that no one needs a robot -- that's a shocking discovery when you think it's such a wonderful product.
"What we had to do was find a wedge [into the marketplace], and what's happening today is that our wedge is coming from Japan. Now it's a different story; now manufacturers better have robots or there won't be manufacturers anymore. The United States will wind up being a service industry."
Gene Macri, vice-president of Productivity Systems Inc., a Farmington, Mich.-based robotics consulting firm, notes that the greatest resistance to robots comes from middle management. Middle managers, he says, "avoid risk by doing things the way they have always been done." They fear the temporary downtime that installing a robot may mean, even though the technology could increase profits in the long run. If things go wrong, the managers say, it will be their necks, not those of the robot manufacturers, that are on the line. "And old-timers," Macri adds, "may also fear that the new equipment could strip them of their expertise, which is predicated on old systems and old equipment."
Even robot makers seem to have lacked vision at the outset. It was General Motors that "came up with the idea of doing spot welding," Engelberger concedes. "We never thought of that." (Robots for spot welding on automotive lines now account for 57% of Unimation's business). "There's a great deal of serendipity involved in this robotics game."
If manufacturers had been a bit more imaginative in their early marketing, Engelberger says, robots might now be used in a broad range of businesses rather than concentrated in less than a dozen heavy industries. And, once manufacturers latched onto big companies, they neglected the smaller ones; as a result, 20% of the clients now buy 80% of the product. But that's beginning to change.
Laura Conigliaro, an analyst with Bache Halsey Stuart Shields Inc., points out that the recent recession, which played havoc with the auto and appliance industries, is forcing some major rethinking on the part of robot vendors. "Ultimately," she explains, "the effect of this downturn will be positive, as robot vendors realize that other markets must be pursued vigorously."
Surprisingly, organized labor has offered little resistance to the new technology. Employees have generally been replaced during normal attrition, and displaced workers are frequently upgraded into better jobs. Labor leaders fear that industries -- not jobs -- may be lost to Japan.
"We don't have 300,000 auto workers out of work because we put in robots," says Weisel. "It's because the Japanese put in robots and are bringing their products here."
Workers generally accept the automated assistants after some initial trepidation. One welder, whose partner had been "bumped" by a robot, said of it, "I like it fine; it doesn't talk back to me." And when a robot at a Ford stamping plant in Chicago broke down for an extended period, its human co-workers sent it cards and threw it a get-well party.
Businesspeople are becoming more aware of he advantages of using robots. More and more are hiring robots, and many of these "Knuckleheads" are going to work for small companies. For years, there was a truism that indicated, "If you need only one robot, you don't need any." Given more reliable, less expensive, and easier-to-use robots, escalating manufacturing costs, stagnant productivity, and an economy that seems determined to sink the small businessperson, that is no longer the case.
"We've got robots in die-casting shops that had five people at the time we put them in," says Weisel. These five included "the owner, his wife, who was keeping the books, his son, who swept up afterwards, and two workers."
Robots are already earning their keep at the Shelby Die Casting Co. Inc. in its Fayette, Ala., plant; Engineered Sinterings and Plastics Inc. in Watertown, Conn.; Kerkau Manufacturing in Bay City, Mich.; and at hundreds of other small firms throughout the United States. Kerkau, a small custom and production machine shop (37 employees, annual sales of about $2.4 million), discovered that it was able to run a single robot on a part-time basis and still come out ahead.
Five years ago the company, which specializes in the production of valve components and related piping parts for the oil and chemical industries, installed a new machine and a Prab robot to run it.The Bullard machine, which turns, faces, bores, and threads pipe flanges, is used only when the company gets an order for at least 3,000 units; the Prab loads the raw flanges onto the machine, turns them over halfway through the eight-step process, and then unloads the finished product.
Don Griffin, who oversees Kerkau's machines, estimates that the Prab is "at least 50% faster than a man." Adds sales manager Mick Weadock, "With some of the larger flanges, if you had a guy doing it, his arm would probably fall off. You get pretty darned tired loading and unloading 35-pound pieces."
The robot, he notes, has been "very cost-effective" and has been less trouble to maintain than many of the plant's other machines. "Everyone's pleased with it," he says.
At the Robots VI Conference and Exposition in Detroit, robot manufacturers, users, and cognoscenti seemed to have reached a consensus, stated most succinctly by Engelberger, who believes that the American manufacturer now faces a critical choice. "Automate, emigrate... or evaporate," He advises.
