reichelt survey shows the triumph of robotics and cobots in industrial companies in Europe.
Robots and smart helpers have long since ceased to be a rarity in European companies. Thanks to the enormous strides in the development of robotics, many possibilities are open to companies. Robots now are affordable and attractive even for small and medium-sized enterprises. Nevertheless, it seems that the full potential of their application has not yet been exhausted. reichelt elektronik surveyed more than 1,500 European companies from the industrial sector on this subject.
You can’t do it without robots!
At least the companies surveyed agree on this. A full 90 percent agreed that the use of robots helps makes them more competitive. Knowing this, it is not surprising that 84 percent of the companies surveyed rely on robots. Even among smaller and medium-sized companies, more than 84 percent already use robots.
At 59 percent, production and manufacturing is named as the main field of activity. Preparatory work steps in production (48%) and warehouse logistics (47%) are also cited with considerable frequency. Therefore, the main task of robots is also to relieve employees. About half (48%) of the companies surveyed have their robots perform physically difficult or challenging tasks, and another 43 percent outsource repetitive tasks to the machines.
Concrete work includes:
- 39% Assembling or loading machines
- 37% packing tasks
- 36% Joining work (pressure joining, gluing, sealing, roller hemming)
- 36% Cutting (milling, sawing, laser cutting, etc.)
Or can you?
Although robots are becoming increasingly popular with European companies, their areas of application are clearly defined. Only 5 percent aspire to automate all tasks in production, while 27 percent only want to delegate a small number of tasks. In addition, one of the biggest difficulties for the introduction of robots is that the tasks in question might be incompatible with the already existing systems (42%). A similarly large hurdle (42%) are the high acquisition costs.
In order for the implementation of robots to be successful, European companies want flexibility above all from the smart machines. 77 percent find it important that the robot can be (re)programmed easily and quickly. Likewise, almost a third (32%) of the respondents consider it critical for success that buying a robot is accompanied by a sufficient budget planning that also covers unforeseen costs.
Better together
Flexibility and versatility are particular advantages of collaborative robots, so-called cobots. They are designed so that people can interact and work with them. Unlike heavy industrial robots that do their work behind fences and barriers for safety reasons, cobots are designed to work together. In the industrial sector, this concept is being enthusiastically embraced. Around half of the industrial companies surveyed (46%) say they already work with cobots and more than a quarter (29%) are planning to purchase them within the next 12 months. There is a clear trend towards investing in cobots, especially in medium-sized companies.
According to the respondents, the majority (54%) of collaborative robots are also used in production and manufacturing. However, 45 percent say they are used significantly more often for product quality inspection than other robots (26%). This is probably due to the fact that companies trust a human-machine team more when it comes to the quality of their products than automating this task entirely.
Conclusion
The vast majority of European companies already work with robots. However, the field of application has so far focused mainly on manufacturing and production. The companies’ experiences with existing robots are consistently positive. Thus, 82 percent of those surveyed consider the smart helpers to be easy to operate. The implementation of new robots also runs smoothly for the majority of companies (68%).
“Robots have made enormous strides in development in recent years. They have become smaller, more compact, smarter and more versatile. Cobots in particular also convince smaller and medium-sized companies with their flexibility. They thus continue the triumphant march of robotics and help companies of all sizes to increase productivity and produce reliably,” concludes Ulf Timmermann, CEO of reichelt elektronik. “Cobots offer companies very special opportunities to solve today’s challenges in production together with humans.”
Further information:
Survey: The figures were collected by the international survey institute OnePoll for reichelt elektronik and include 1,550 participants from Europe, namely the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Images: reichelt elektronik, Adobe Stock
