Women Achievers
Published on : Monday 04-04-2022
Two years after they were halted in March 2021 in the face of the pandemic, India resumed regular international flights starting March 27th, signalling a return to near normalcy in international travel.
These two years witnessed several ups and downs in the global economy – more downs than ups – that started with the initial stringent lockdowns when streets were deserted and an unusual calm descended on the bustling industrial areas globally. As the world learned to live with the pandemic, lockdowns were progressively diluted, only to be periodically clamped again, with fresh strains of the virus like Delta and Omicron threatening renewed assault. Even at the time of writing this, Shanghai in China is facing a stringent lockdown with an alarming rise in the number of cases. So it is fingers crossed, really.
Yet every cloud has a silver lining. The Covid-19 pandemic has struck a blow for digital transformation as more and more companies realised the benefits of automation in their operations when lockdowns prevented full strength of workers from joining shifts due to reasons regulatory and those beyond control, even in essential services. One of the focus areas of this renewed thrust on automation is robotics, especially service robots used in healthcare and hospitality segments. However, for a country aspiring to become a manufacturing powerhouse, it is industrial robots that hold the key to higher productivity matched with premium quality. According to the 2021 World Robot Report published by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) in December 2021, the use of industrial robots in factories around the world is accelerating at a high rate: 126 robots per 10,000 employees is the new average of global robot density in the manufacturing industries – nearly double the number five years ago (2015: 66 units). Asian nations occupy the top three lots in global robot density with South Korea leading the pack with a whopping 932 units per 10,000 workers, with Singapore at second place (605) and Japan third with 390. But it is China, which is the most dynamic in scaling up robot use, where the density rate rose from 49 units in 2015 to 246 units in 2020. Today, China’s robot density ranks 9th globally compared to 25th just five years ago. In comparison, India’s robot density is just 4.
The Cover Story of this edition of Industrial Automation has experts debating on the topic of Robots in Manufacturing in the Indian context. Robots help boost productivity and improve quality and hence the most industrialised nations in the world have a high robot density. As one of our panellists’ points out, it will be very difficult to scale production to the levels envisaged under the PLI scheme without robotic automation.