Managing Robots Strategically
| Published date | 01 March 1985 |
| Pages | 20-23 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb057397 |
| Date | 01 March 1985 |
| Author | F.D. Barrett |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Managing
Robots
Strategically
by F.D. Barrett
Management Concepts Limited,
Toronto, Ontario
Introduction
The objective of this article is to provide business managers
with a non-technical overview of robotics in business. We
will not attempt to handle the engineering and financial nuts
and bolts. The purpose is only to help managers get into
a better position to assess what to expect, how to position
themselves strategically, and how to plan and prepare. Adap-
ting to the age of the robot will be one of the biggest
challenges that managers, workers and the man on the
street will have to face. At the policy and strategy level, it
will also have to be a monumental challenge to senior
executives
Although intelligent robots capable of flexible behaviour have
existed for some years, a full-scale "robot revolution" across
the whole of business and industry has yet to take place.
But it
will.
It is well underway in manufacturing and
warehousing. It is moving into offices and service industries
such as hotels, hospitals and restaurants. It will even move
into the home. By 1995 robots will be found wherever peo-
ple and machines are present.
Equipped with gripper-hands, wrists and elbows, robots
have had their biggest impact so far in the automobile in-
dustry where they mostly perform welding and spray-
painting tasks. The impact in the car industry has already
been enormous and will increase It has been estimated that
the jobs of one-and-a-half million car workers can be per-
formed by the already existing, relatively simple state-of-the-
art robots.
The Sceptics
Some sceptical senior executives still believe that most of
the talk about an impending robotics revolution is mere
media madness and journalistic hype. However, this scep-
ticism is often due to a lack of knowledge and awareness
of the strong underlying tides of scientific and technological
progress that are driving this revolution forward. The scep-
ticism also underestimates the speed at which the price of
robots is falling while the price of labour rises and the speed
with which robots are being made smarter.
Let us not be gullible about the future but let us at the same
time ask what robotics is all about. What is a robot? What
can robots do? Where are robots being used? What trends
and developments lie ahead? How is your firm going to
han-
dle the robotics opportunity?
Robotics can be regarded as an extension or advance in the
field of fixed automation just as automated or automatic fix-
ed machines were themselves an advance over ordinary
machines that require human control Robots relate to their
environment and to the specific task at hand. For example,
a robotic palletising system at the Toronto margarine plant
of Nabisco Brands will employ optical sensors to
discriminate among any of four boxes in order to load them
on to the right pallet.
In the wholesale part of the grocery industry in the United
States one "guestimate" has it that there are at least 20
robots currently employed at palletising Such a robot may
cost in the vicinity of $60,000 but associated costs may
bring the total installed cost up to well over $100,000. But
robot costs are going down and wages are going up. And
better, more versatile robots are being invented. It is
reasonable to assume that by the end of this decade the
wholesale grocery industry will employ hundreds.
Computers and Robots
Robots are mainly made possible by the computer. It is the
computer that provides the automated robot with its in-
telligence and flexibility In fact it helps to think of a robot
as being a computer to which arms or wheels or eyes or
other tools and limbs are added Intelligent robots differ from
other automated machines and equipment in possessing
the ability to be taught how to do a wide variety of different
things and to adjust their behaviour to a limited range of
expected but uncertain changes in their physical environ-
ment. Some extremely advanced computer-robots are even
designed to be capable of learning from their experience;
they can, for example, come to play an ever better game
of chess.
Robots are in use in industry for such tasks as lifting heavy
objects, unloading and loading conveyors, loading and
unloading pallets, trolleys and transport vehicles, and pick-
ing up bottles and placing them in boxes. Robots are now
even at work in food testing laboratories cleaning tubes and
preparing samples. Eventually, manufacturing employment
will fall from the present 25 per cent of the workforce to
ten per cent or less.
Even where North American top management faced with
the dramatic facts is no longer sceptical, it often puts
robotics in the category of being a purely technical and
operational issue, best left entirely to the engineering staff
of the company. This is a great mistake, one which is not
being made by the Japanese. Robots, like computers, and
like automation, are powerful and radical competitive
weapons, and have radical implications not only for costs,
but for productivity, products and services, design, quality,
speed of delivery, place of delivery and for methods of ad-
ministration, co-ordination and control.
20 IMDS • MARCH/APRIL • 1985
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