UK manufacturers have been urged to embrace automation and robotics as soon as possible, with the rise and uptake of the technology tipped to be as inevitable as that of computers in the 90s.
Last year represented a record-breaking year for uptake of industrial robotics worldwide – with the International Federation of Robotics reporting 4,281,585 units operating in factories globally, representing a 10% increase from 2023.
However, only 3,830 of these were in the UK. Despite representing a 51% increase from the previous year, Britain still lags way behind European powerhouses like Germany and France.
Søren Peters, who founded HowToRobot to simplify the process for businesses to find robots that meet their exact requirements, told Packaging Scotland there is a pressing need in the UK to adopt the technology or risk falling behind on the international stage.
Søren, whose background in Denmark was in the IT industry, drew a comparison between the development of robots today with the IT revolution in the 1990s, citing ‘similar needs and the same sense of inevitability’.
After discovering companies had spent upwards of $100 million on robots that turned out to be unsuited to their line of work, he launched a consultancy with the aim of creating bespoke roadmaps for businesses to ensure value could be found in their adoption of robotics.
Due to the speed at which robotics were advancing, this evolved into a global directory now known as HowToRobot, which asks firms what they intend to do or achieve, then matches them with the technology best suited to that objective.
“We’ve tried to create a vessel where no matter where you stand, or how you want to move forward, there is a way to get onboard,” Søren explained, providing an example of the creator of ‘very, very expensive’ lamps that engaged HowToRobot after insisting they had been told their manufacturing process couldn’t be automated. Within six days, two offers had been made by innovators that had already automated similar production lines.
“We do tonnes of those every week on the platform,” Søren added.
Although the UK has been slower to adopt the technology, which Søren attributes to a mix of varying comfort levels with change and the challenges posed by the rapid advancement of technology, Scotland is embracing the innovation. HowToRobot already works with several clients in the whisky industry and aims to further support companies across Scotland’s manufacturing sector.
Asked what he would say to a business that is either hesitant about the adoption of robotics, or doesn’t trust it to do as good a job as humans, Søren pointed to McDonald’s – a global superpower which successfully combines both automation and human skillsets. “McDonald’s exists because it automated its system,” he continued. “I don’t know how many times I’ve travelled and had a funny stomach because I’ve tried local places.
“So, if I’m going to an important meeting in a country where I’m unsure of the local cuisine, I always do McDonald’s – because I know what I’m going to get.”
While there is often a belief that robotics will result in job losses, Søren said the reality is that it regularly enhances the offering of existing staff – pointing to how much knowledge someone who has worked on a production line for 10+ years would have about a product, and how much more valuable that knowledge would be in a role such as quality control, which also happens to be less physically demanding or tedious.
“We try to remove the word ‘technology’ from the conversation and say, ‘forget the technology for a second, what is it you’re trying to do?’” Søren continued. “I think people have a tendency of trying to replace humans and very often we meet people that try to robotise the entire process – it’s highly likely that’s not going to happen.”
