Page 42 - Food&Drink March 2022

AUTOMATION & DIGITISATION
Making work ‘more human’
Kim Povlsen took the helm as president of Universal Robots in March 2021. In this article for Food & Drink Business, Povlsen looks back on his first year.
LEFT: Cobots can give people more time for innovative and creative work.
INSET: UR president Kim Povlsen is passionate about collaborative automation’s role in manufacturing.
footprint, flexibility, and rapid deployment of cobots.
Take Singapore for example
– one of the highest users of robots in the world and a country on a mission to become self-sufficient. Collaborative automation has helped with social distancing and ultimately keeping people employed and its economy running. Singapore faces its fair share of challenges, but automation is helping to bridge gaps in its workforce resourcing.
This trend of changing job scope can help to retain workforce while relieving employees from work which is unfulfilling or physically demanding. I am so excited to be leading a company that empowers this change in the way that work is done.
COBOT COLLABORATION
WeseeURastheresultofa collaborative business model. The best way of understanding this is to look at a smart phone – it is great technology, but the real leap forward has come from the technical platform it created, which allowed independent companies to develop compatible applications to cover every conceivable human need.
Our cobot technology creates similar opportunity.
We now work with almost 300 independent partners who design and develop components and applications for our cobots. This is the only way to create the range of technology at the pace of development demanded by the market.
Moving forward, we foresee an exciting year ahead as Universal Robots continues to grow in the region. The number of independent developers involved also creates real choice for our customers which they can match to their unique businessneeds. ✷
WHEN I joined Universal Robots (UR), I knew I was joining a fast-growing company in a ground-breaking sector.
The more I see of collaborative automation, the more I am convinced technology can solve many of the problems in the manufacturing sector today.
need for resilience in the manufacturing sector while supply chain problems have forced companies to analyse their production processes.
Meanwhile, we are seeing challenges for the manufacturing workforce caused by an ageing workforce
done by humans. The jobs in manufacturing, assembly, and operations are often dull, dirty, and dangerous.
Collaborative automation is paving the way for the workforce to take on more interesting jobs. With cobots working alongside people, employees are becoming adept cobot operators, assigning cobots to work on repetitive tasks while they spend more time devising innovative strategies.
LOCAL APPETITE
Thinking of the local market in Australia and New Zealand, the region has been resilient, and the pandemic created a drive towards further innovation.
There is a strong appetite for automation with many companies already in the process of updating their technology to compensate for having fewer people in the factory.
Companies in the Asia Pacific are realising that they can now compete with the likes of China thanks to a stable electricity gridcombinedwiththesmall
“ With cobots working alongside people, employees are becoming adept cobot operators, assigning cobots to work on repetitive tasks while they spend more time devising innovative strategies.”
People are becoming more aware of this potential, which is driving demand for collaborative robots (cobots), best known as robots that can work safely alongside humans. As the need for cobots grows, our technology is becoming more versatile, and we can offer more flexibility across a wider range of industries.
The world has gone through an extraordinary couple of years as it adapted to the pandemic. COVID-19hashighlightedthe
and younger people making different career choices. Access to migrant labour has also been difficult for many countries due to travel restrictions.
Automation has an important role in solving these challenges. Cobots can work alongside staff, increase productivity, and make manufacturing jobs more attractive to workers.
In the post-pandemic world, people are starting to rethink thekindofworkthatshouldbe
42 | Food&Drink business | March 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au