According to the International Federation of Robotics, the manufacturing industry in Germany ranks third worldwide in terms of robot density - behind Singapore and South Korea. According to the Automatica Trend Index, this trend is set to intensify. For the survey, 100 industry decision-makers and 1,000 employees were questioned. The result: For around 80% of industrial decision-makers, the most important advantages of robotics include the fact that employees can be relieved of tasks that are hazardous to their health, that production can be quickly adapted to new tasks with robots and that production costs can also be reduced. According to the survey, decision-makers are once again focusing on "machine helpers" to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Industrial companies with robots can specifically automate individual work steps to ensure 'social distancing' in production," says Patrick Schwarzkopf, Managing Director of the VDMA Robotics + Automation Association, on the contribution of industrial robotics to overcoming the coronavirus crisis. "The new requirements for safe workplaces in production can be easily implemented with the help of robotics. As practice shows, robots help to make important manufacturing processes more resilient and implement new requirements quickly."

Robots for higher productivity

Jean-François Bauer, Head of Business Development at Swiss assembly solutions specialist Mikron Automation, gives an example: "Right at the beginning of the Covid crisis, several pharmaceutical customers in Europe, the USA and Asia asked us to support a rapid increase in their production so that they could deliver duplicate lines for diagnostic kits as quickly as possible." At the same time, his company expects that "strategic decisions from the past will be put to the test following the recent pandemic experience". Companies in Europe or the USA are likely to use robotics and automation to build up new capacity in their home markets in order to minimize dependencies and weak points in the supply chains.

German SMEs rely on robots

Another result of the Automatica Trend Index: German SMEs will probably use industrial robots more frequently for flexible production in the future. In their forecast, 84% of industrial decision-makers believe that the increased use of robotics in SMEs is not a question of "if" but "when". 81% believe that programming robots has become easier, paving the way for their use in small and medium-sized companies. On the other hand, two thirds of those responsible see the fact that their own employees still lack the necessary training for robot operation as an obstacle.

Employees open to mechatronic helpers

Employees have a fundamentally positive attitude towards industrial assistants: A good three quarters of employees consider training in the use of robotics to be an important offer from (medium-sized) companies. Just as many say that companies that offer further training in robotics and digital technology are attractive employers for skilled workers.