Celebrating Automation
Published on : Friday 12-08-2022
The benefits of automation are far too numerous to recall and repeat in a few paragraphs, and more importantly, too well known to the industry.
To put it simply, automation helps manufacturers keep costs low while improving quality, and ramp up capacity rapidly to meet demand. The automobile industry is an early example – in fact it is the automobile industry that promoted automation right from the early days when Henry Ford installed the first assembly line in 1913. The system improved productivity tremendously taking the work to the worker, building the automobile step by step as it moved forward the line, a vast improvement over workers moving individual vehicles chassis around the shop floor, building the car. The introduction of robots in the 1960s further boosted productivity to meet the never ending demand for the latest models. The story continues to this day, as in spite of huge capacities and state-of-the-art production plants, popular models still have a waiting period.
Demand for automation is still growing and there are good reasons for that. Even as the benefits of automation are obvious, high initial cost and the complexities in adoption have put it out of reach of many businesses, especially the SMEs. This is now changing with emerging technologies making it easier to adopt, as well as economies of scale bringing the cost of hardware down. Robots, for example, are comparatively cheaper today thanks to the advances made in technology, and are also easier to programme. The new breeds of collaborative robots or cobots, and autonomous mobile robots have further reduced complexities for deployment. As a result, the market for automation technologies is still growing. A recent report by Fortune Business Insights states the industrial automation market size was USD 191.89 billion in 2021. The market size is expected to rise from USD 205.86 billion in 2022 to USD 395.09 billion by 2029 at a CAGR of 9.8% during the forecast period. The report ascribes this to increasing adoption of IoT and digitalisation in the manufacturing and production sectors.
Later this month, from August 16th to 19th to be precise, India’s premium automation event, Automation Expo, returns after a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic, for the 15th edition at the traditional venue – the Bombay Exhibition Centre at NSE Complex near Goregoan, Mumbai. The Covid-19 pandemic caused much distress and disruption, but for industry, it re-emphasised the need for automation and even more automation in the cause of human safety at workplaces. The last two years have witnessed dramatic advances in several areas of automation for the manufacturing industries, and many of these developments would be on display. We invite you to this show, and request you to register online to avoid delay at the venue.
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