By Timothy Aeppel
Feb 10 (Reuters) - North American companies struggling
to hire workers in the tightest labor market in decades brought
on more robots last year than ever before, with many earmarked
for new electric vehicle and battery factories under
construction.
Demand for robots appears to have slackened near the end of
the year, though, raising questions about how strong 2023 will
be in the face of shifting household consumption patterns and
the rising interest rates engineered by central bankers to bring
high inflation under control.
Companies, overwhelmingly located in the United States but
including some in Canada and Mexico, ordered just over 44,100
robots in 2022, an 11% increase over the previous year and a new
record, according to data compiled by the Association for
Advancing Automation, an industry group also known as A3. The
value of those machines totaled $2.38 billion, an 18% increase
over the prior year, according to the data.
The "labor shortage doesn't seem to be letting up," said
Jeff Burnstein, president of A3. Many companies, scrambling to
find workers amid the lowest U.S. unemployment rate since 1969,
see automation as a quick fix.
Burnstein said there was a visible slowdown in orders at the
end of the year, which raises a question about how 2023 will
evolve. "The fourth quarter was really propped up by the
strength in the auto industry," he said. "We saw a falling-off
in non-automotive" orders.
A shift away from pandemic-era consumer behavior likely
played a role in the orders drop-off in some segments, he added.
"You saw companies like Amazon put a pause on building new
warehouses, which means they probably canceled or delayed
purchases of new automation."
Supply chain problems may also have distorted last year's
results. Burnstein said robot makers saw some customers place
extra orders during the COVID-19 health crisis - just to ensure
they would get part of what they needed.
AUTO SECTOR DRIVES DEMAND
More than half of last year's orders came from automakers
and their suppliers - a group that has long led the way in
automation of U.S. factories.
New plants for electric vehicles, batteries and battery
recycling have been announced since the beginning of 2021 at a
cost of $160 billion, according to Atlas Public Policy, a
U.S.-based research group working with automakers and
environmental groups.
Most robots ordered last year will be used for material
handling - an expansive category that includes all types of
movement and handling of goods inside factories and warehouses.
Closure Systems International Inc's sprawling plant in
Crawfordsville, Indiana, for instance, recently automated the
job of packing and sealing boxes at the end of the assembly
line. The company produces closures used for things like soda
bottles and food packages.
Next up are "auditor" jobs. Machines in the Crawfordsville
plant spit out new caps faster than a machine gun, so workers
called auditors currently sit in small booths along the line,
constantly checking that specifications are met.
Brad Bennett, the company's senior vice president of global
operations, said small robots will soon be installed in the
booths to do the inspection work. "We won't have to reduce
people," he said. Those workers will move to other tasks.
The new machines will help avoid what happened during the
pandemic, he said. "During COVID, we were literally running with
30% of the plant down because we couldn't get a $15-an-hour guy
to show up."
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(Reporting by Timothy Aeppel;
Editing by Dan Burns and Paul Simao)
