Countries in Southeast Asia lead the way in embracing industrial robots by a considerable margin. If Europe and the United States fail to close this gap, it could have a negative impact on their future competitiveness and economic growth.
This is stated by ITIF in a new report. The organisation points out that industrial robots were traditionally used mainly in the manufacturing industry, but are now gaining a foothold in more and more other sectors. Robots are thus becoming increasingly important for a country's productivity and competitiveness. As a result, the embrace of robots is becoming an increasingly important economic indicator for policymakers to chart the growth and development of the economy.
'Too little focus on average salary'
Every year, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) publishes an overview of global robot density, looking at the number of robots per 10,000 workers in a country. However, ITIF argues that this does not take sufficient account of salary. Countries with higher average salaries have a greater incentive to automate work using robots. For countries with lower average salaries, this is less attractive as it translates into a long payback period.
ITIF has therefore mapped the embrace of industrial robots in 27 different countries worldwide in a research report. This included the average salary in these countries and the embrace of robots that can be expected based on this average in the final ranking. This shows that countries in Southeast Asia significantly outperform other countries and lead the way in embracing industrial robots.
Here, ITIF used the IFR's robot density data as a basis, then compared this figure with the average income of manufacturing workers and the embrace of robots that might be expected based on this figure. ITIF hereby assumes that an average robot can work two shifts a day, five days a week and 50 weeks a year for $250,000. ITIF also assumes that introducing robots will reduce the number of human workers in a factory by 90%.
Top 5 deviates significantly
Interestingly, ITIF's top five countries leading the way in embracing robots look considerably different from IFR's top five. For instance, IFR figures show that Korea has the highest robot density, followed by Singapore, Germany, Japan and Sweden. Looking at ITIF's figures, Korea and Singapore again lead the way. However, the top five is closed by Thailand, China and Taiwan. Germany is only tenth in the rankings, Japan seventh and Sweden 12th.
It is also noticeable that Europe performs a lot worse in ITIF's survey than in IFR's survey. Slovenia and the Czech Republic, with respective sixth and eighth positions, are the European countries in the lead in terms of embracing robots according to ITIF, followed by Germany (#10) Spain (#11) and Italy (#13). The Netherlands follows in 17th position (#12 on IFR's ranking), behind Canada, Denmark and the United States, among others. According to ITIF, the embrace of robots in our country is 51% lower than might be expected based on the average salary of Dutch production workers. With the exception of Slovenia and the Czech Republic, no European country performs better than the global average.
Russia performs worst
The ranking is closed by Brazil, Switzerland and Russia. In Brazil, the embrace of industrial robots is 83% lower than expected based on average salary, while in Switzerland it is as high as 84%. Russia performs the worst; its embrace of robots is 88% lower than expected.
More information and all the figures can be found in the report 'Which Nations Really Lead in Industrial Robot Adoption?', available for free.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Source: ITIF
Source photo: Pixabay / jamoluk
