Looking beyond a temp solution

According to the International Federation of Robotics figures released in September 2023, in 2022 the UK had 2534 industrial robots, and while this marked a 3% increase, it was still less than a tenth of those in Germany. At the time of writing 2023 figures have not been published, and while I live in hope of great or even moderate improvement, something tells me that once again the UK figures will be lacklustre.

While I am of course aware of the facts, writing for CDA and lreaning about all the exciting innovation that is out there, i do find it all too easy to forget about the somewhat sorry reality of industrial automation in the UK. Walking around any of the numerous trade shows that serve the sector, I get caught up in the knowledge and enthusiasm of the exhibitors, not to mention the benefits that the equipment being showcased can bring. However, the reality that many businesses continue to rely on human labour when some level of automation could be of huge benefit was recently brought home to me in real life, rather than through the lens of industrial sector publishing.

Home from university for the summer, my son recently picked up some temp work at a local business, which specialises in packaging and packing fast moving consumer goods. It’s an apparently successful company, working with a plethora of household names, the type of business that surely must be investing in automation to increase productivity? Suffice to say, I was somewhat taken aback when I discovered that the job had entailed manually unpacking Freddo frogs (other chocolate bars are avaialable) from a box, counting out five, and then putting them into a smaller boxes, which were then manually counted into a larger box. On another day they were tasked with unboxing packaging sleeves, placing them on a conveyor that fed them through an automated labeller, and then counting the sleeves back into a box at the other end of the conveyor.

I simply cannot figure out why this type of task is still being carried out manually. Are funds for investment not available? Are the people in charge not aware of the automated solutions that could be used? Or are they just so used to the current business model that changing it seems like a huge task?

I was half joking when I told my son that he should take copies of CDA into work and leave them lying around in the hope that the business could see what it was missing. He was so horrified by this suggestion that he found a job elsewhere. To be fair, he also found the work so monotonous and boring that even the pretty good wage - well above most temporary jobs - wasn't enough to keep him there either, which makes me think that in this case, automation would defintely be a good option.