Page 3 - EE Times Europe November 2021 final

EE|Times EUROPE 3

EDITOR’S LETTER

Automation Is No Longer Just an Option

Imagine a time when manufacturing sectors, autonomous solutions to support workers, enhanced cognition,
is flexible enough to scale and to weather and human-robot collaborations.
disruptions. That time isn’t far off. Commitments are also made at the country level. The German
In recent months, Bosch and Infineon government, together with the federal states and the private sector, has
have opened 300-mm wafer fabs in set the target of spending at least 3.5% of the annual gross domestic
Dresden, Germany, and Villach, Austria, product on R&D in technologies such as robotics by 2025. In
respectively. Automation buzzed about. mid-October, the French government launched an ambitious
“It’s a fully automated fab,” Otto Graf, head €30 billion plan to “decarbonize” and revive industry in France by 2030.
of the Bosch Dresden plant, proudly told Of course, there is no automation without machine vision.
EE Times Europe. Similarly, Reinhard Ploss, CEO of Infineon, declared The recent Vision 2021 event in Stuttgart reflected the current
at the inauguration ceremony, “It is very important for us, in order optimism in the machine-vision industry. According to VDMA, the
to be successful, to automate all the tasks, and we need to shape the European machine-vision industry is “in an excellent position.”
transformation of our workforce.” Between 2013 and 2019, the turnover in Germany alone increased by
The months-long global health crisis has changed our perceptions an average of 9% per year, and in 2020, while the turnover decreased
of the workplace, especially in a manufacturing environment, and by 4% because of Covid-19, “the decline was nowhere near as drastic as
prompted the shift to industrial automation through robotics and in many other industries with good prospects for future growth,” said
machine vision. Mark Williamson, chairman of the board of the VDMA Machine Vision
“The Covid-19 pandemic hasn’t started any new trend, but it accel- Division. The turnover in the European machine-vision industry is
erated the use of robotics beyond established practice,” said Susanne expected to grow by 7% in 2021.
Bieller, general secretary of the International Federation of Robotics But — because there is always a “but” — the global semiconductor
(IFR). “In this respect, the pandemic has proven to be the biggest single shortage could further disrupt supply chains and lengthen lead times.
driver for change in industry.” Among the industry’s participants — “camera manufacturers and
Annual installations of industrial robots more than tripled in the system integrators — there is practically no company that is not
2010 decade and reached about 2.7 million units by the end of 2019, suffering due to the lack of chips,” Williamson said at Vision 2021.
according to IFR’s World Robotic Statistics. While IFR’s data indi- “Although this is not leading to a downturn on the market, it is damp-
cates that global robot installations dropped by 2% in 2020, robotics ening growth prospects.”
order intake in 2021 indicates that there will be strong growth in The coronavirus crisis leaves us with a lesson on human vulnerabil-
North America and Europe. In Germany, for instance, the robotics and ity. With social distancing in force and workers’ health being the
automation sector is expected to generate sales of €13.4 billion in No. 1 priority, robots have had to ensure manufacturing continuity
2021, an increase of 11% year on year, according to the VDMA Robotics and eventually improved efficiency. With or without Covid-19, process
and Automation Association. Order books are filling up fast, and the automation is no longer just an option; it’s a necessity. ■
outlook into 2022 is excellent. The automotive industry is tradition-
ally the most important customer of industrial robots, followed by the
electrical/electronics industry.
Robotization is a race that Europe cannot afford to lose if it wants
to regain its industrial autonomy and improve its competitiveness. In
spring 2021, the European Union launched a €198.7 million
robotics-related work program under Horizon Europe. The program will — Anne-Françoise Pelé
focus on the digital transition of the manufacturing and construction editor-in-chief of EE Times Europe

IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK

www.eetimes.eu | NOVEMBER 2021