As companies struggle to attract and retain needed talent, they are turning to automation to make up for the shortfall. In their 2018 Industry Report, MHI, the nation’s largest materials handling logistics and supply chain association, showed that over 70% of manufacturers surveyed plan to adopt robotics technology into their supply chain operations in the next five years. A recently published video by MHI titled “Robotics as the Solution to the Workforce Challenge” further illustrates this shift.

While technological advances and decreased hardware costs are helping drive this growth, small to mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) are largely being left behind in this trend. The cost and risks for SMEs to train employees as well as implement and deploy robots for immediate impact is still too high. Until ease-of-use and accessibility are the number one priority of robotics manufacturers, widespread automation and adoption will not happen.

Robotics Accessibility is Key to Workforce Competitiveness

At Waypoint, we believe that designing robots for the people who actually put them to work is crucial to eliminating barriers to adoption. Building powerful tools for the workforce helps them do more and go home at the end of the day with more energy for their families. With these user-friendly robots, the workforce expands its capabilities and the company grows by  leveraging years of invaluable experience, loyalty, and know-how.

We have a responsibility to deliver great robots for the workforce. Automation is the way of the future, and our easy-to-use robots will help get you there. Currently, empowering the existing workforce with technology to close the skills gap appears to be an under-vocalized idea, but one we hope is gathering momentum in the industry.

We agree that robotics can be a solution for the workforce challenge but until robots are as easy to use as an elevator, adoption for the average small to medium-sized business will be slow.

The content & opinions in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of RoboticsTomorrow

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