Automation, as a subject for OODA Loop research and analysis, cuts a broad swath across many industry verticals.  As we attempt to further scope our coverage, specific areas of interest have emerged that we thought would be of interest to the OODA Loop membership:

Security Automation: Specifically, using automation for repetitive and time-consuming tasks for external cyber threats and internal information technology security. What are the safety and risk variables of this type of IT-based automation?

Automation and the Workforce:  How is this implemented and what are the objectives:  Efficiencies?  Collaboration?  Scalability? Cost-cutting?  Innovation in operations? Does this type of automation always map back to a reduction in the workforce?

Automation – or Augmentation – of the workforce:  The perennial debate surrounding robotics automation of the workforce is will jobs be 100% automated (with large-scale job elimination and job loss)?  Or will there always be a need for a human factor in certain industry verticals,  translating into machine augmentation of certain tasks and operations, which a human operator integrated into the robotics design?

Autonomous Vehicles as Automation: This one is a bit tricky: but think of an autonomous fleet of trucking vehicles, for example, as one automated system in a larger production and distribution ecosystem or supply chain.  Where is the innovation at this economy of scale? How do the business issues differ, if at all, at this scale of operations?

Automation of AI/Machine Learning Training Models:  Can and should machine learning models retrain automatically?  Should there be a human touchpoint integrated into this retraining process, to guard against biases becoming embedded into an AI system and/or the risk of AI Accidents when retraining is left unsupervised prematurely?

Automation Case Studies:  Where are the best-in-class examples of automation, in the federal space and the private sector, worth researching and analyzing for strategic insights?

Industry Standardization:  Like TCP/IP (or any of the IEEE ISO standards) what are the emergent industry standards which will allow for seamless interoperability and widespread commercial scalability?  Are some commercial releases operating in a ‘closed garden” architecture?  If so, is there a clear competitive advantage to such an approach?

Please reach out to us if there are any industry sectors, government agencies, robotics sub-disciplines, or robotics subsectors you would like us to explore in our research and analysis.

OODA members can contact us by replying to any of our emails or using this form.

We now turn to a recent SWJ article on a significant increase in robot sales in 2021, which continues in earnest in 2022.

Robot Orders Soar after “Years of Stagnant or Declining Order Volumes”

According to the WSJ:  “Orders for workplace robots in the U.S. increased by a record 40% during the first quarter compared with the same period in 2021, according to the Association for Advancing Automation, the robotics industry’s trade group. Robot orders, worth $1.6 billion, climbed 22% in 2021, following years of stagnant or declining order volumes, the group said.

Rising wages and worker shortages, compounded by increases in Covid-19-related absenteeism, are changing some manufacturers’ attitudes about robotics, executives said. ‘Before, you could throw people at a problem instead of finding a more elegant solution,’ said Joe Montano, chief executive officer of Delphon Industries LLC, a maker of packaging for semiconductors, medical devices, and aerospace components.

Delphon, based in Hayward, Calif., lost 40% of its production days during January when the coronavirus spread through its workforce. The disruption accelerated the company’s purchase of three additional robots earlier this year, Mr. Montano said.”  (Wall Street Journal)

The Current Industrial Landscape

The WSJ places these increased robot orders in 2021 and 2022 in the larger context within the industrial robotics sector:

• The use of industrial robots in North America for years had been concentrated in the automotive industry, where robots took on repetitive tasks such as welding on assembly lines.
• While automakers and manufacturers of auto components accounted for 71% of robot orders in 2016, their share declined to 42% in 2021, the automation association said.
• Meanwhile, robots made inroads into other sectors including food production, consumer products, and pharmaceuticals.
• Executives said improved capabilities are allowing robots to be programmed for more-complex tasks requiring a mixture of strength and nimbleness.
• “The robots are becoming easier to use,” said Michael Cicco, chief executive officer of Fanuc America, a unit of Japan’s Fanuc Corp., a major supplier of industrial robots. “Companies used to think that automation was too hard or too expensive to implement.”
• Daron Acemoglu, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said factories’ increasing reliance on automation will lead to an oversupply of human labor that will drive down wages in the years ahead unless other U.S. industries can absorb displaced manufacturing workers.
• “Automation, if it goes very fast, can destroy a lot of jobs,” Mr. Acemoglu said. “The labor shortage is not going to last. This is temporary.” (Wall Street Journal)

Use Case:  Athena Manufacturing LP implements robotics “to handle orders…more than lowering costs”

At Athena Manufacturing LP, a fabricating and machining company for metal equipment used in the semiconductor, energy and aerospace industries, Chief Financial Officer John Newman said customers have been ramping up orders, but Athena has struggled to find enough workers to staff a second weekday shift and a weekend shift.

The Austin, Texas, company purchased seven robots in the past 18 months, including one that grinds down the welds on steel frames for holding semiconductor equipment. Mr. Newman said Athena has spent more than $800,000 on robots, including about $225,000 for the grinding robot alone. The investments aimed to increase Athena’s capacity to handle orders, he said, more than lowering costs.

Grinding the welds on a rack typically took an employee about three hours to complete, but the robot is now able to do it in 30 minutes, he said.

Mr. Newman said the robot can apply more force with a grinding tool than a human can, reducing the amount of time needed to create a smooth welded joint. “The robot doesn’t stop to rest, and that’s understandable for a human because it’s a hard job,” he said.

Acquiring the grinding robot took Athena about four years of research and engineering, Mr. Newman said, including help from 3M Co., which supplies the abrasive materials used in the grinding tool wielded by the robot. Athena has deployed six other robots, four of which weld the racks and two that load metal into machines. Most of these off-the-shelf robots were delivered in a few weeks and can be programmed remotely from a phone app, he said.  (Wall Street Journal)

Use Case:  Delphon Industries LLC – “10 robots, including four so-called cobots that operate side-by-side with employees”

The previously quoted Joe Montano, chief executive officer of Delphon Industries,  said “the company started leasing robots about four years ago to reduce the initial expense. The company now has 10 robots, including four so-called cobots that operate side-by-side with employees.

Delphon’s TouchMark subsidiary applies printing to the surfaces of medical devices, such as catheters. Cobots now are turning and holding the devices while a worker operates a printer that applies the ink to the device. Mr. Montano said two cobots reduced a three-person printing crew to one, saving the company $16,000 a month in expenses.

Two other Delphon cobots assemble packaging for shipping semiconductors and other fragile cargo, which are shipped in plastic boxes. Robots are now being used to clean the 2-inch-by-2-inch boxes with jets of air, dispense a bead of glue inside them and then install layers of mesh and the company’s silicone film padding.

Mr. Montano said Delphon is scaling up robots to work on larger-size boxes. The robots have improved the company’s productivity, he said, resulting in shipments increasing about 15% in 2021 and 2020, respectively, without increasing the company’s workforce of 200 people.

“We haven’t reduced any headcount, but we reassigned them to where we needed people,” he said. (Wall Street Journal)

What Next?

Be on the lookout for ongoing research and analysis on various areas of automation in the weeks ahead.

Stay Informed

It should go without saying that tracking threats are critical to inform your actions. This includes reading our OODA Daily Pulse, which will give you insights into the nature of the threat and risks to business operations.

Stay Informed

It should go without saying that tracking threats are critical to informing your actions. This includes reading our OODA Daily Pulse, which will give you insights into the nature of the threat and risks to business operations.

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