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December 7, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
CEE firms to invest heavily into robots as labour crisis bites
Clare Nuttall in Bucharest
As global shipments of industrial robots reaches a record high of 381,000 last year, the pace of growth in the Central and Eastern European market outstripped almost all of the rest of the world in the uptake of robots, data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) shows.
Companies are increasingly investing into industrial robots to stay competitive, which has become a priority in the CEE region, especially in the fast growing Visegrad 4 economies. Robots are the answer to growing labour shortages in Central Europe that is already driving up wages and increasing inflationary pressure that is threating Central Europe’s competitiveness. Firms in the region are struggling to find workers with the skills they need.
As a historical aside, the word “robot” is a Czech invention, coined by Czech playwright and journalist Karel Capek, who introduced it in his
1920 hit play, R.U.R., or Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots). The root of the word is from the Czech "robota" or "forced labour".
Even after attracting millions of migrant workers from abroad, especially from Ukraine, Central Europe has only partially eased the pressure and investments into industrial robots are expected to continue to rise in the longer-term.
A considerable increase in robot sales has already been seen across the CEE region, the report says, with the exceptions of Romania and Slovakia — the latter somewhat surprisingly given the importance of its auto manufacturing industry, which internationally has emerged as the top investor into robots.
The latest World Robotics Report shows that shipments to the region increased by