BETWEEN 2015 AND 2018, IT IS ESTIMATED THAT AROUND 1.3 MILLION NEW INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS WILL BE INSTALLED IN FACTORIES AROUND THE WORLD.
Australia currently ranks 81st out of 143 OECD economies for innovation efficiency.
Many of us understand that the basis for our future competitiveness lies in our capacity to innovate, to fulfil niche product markets and provide high value-added products. And many of us recognise that automation, including robotics, and specialisation will provide the way of the future, forming the basis for Australia’s manufacturing competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Australia’s unit labour costs, however, have continued to increase faster than other developed nations**, and our investment in factory automation isn’t keeping pace.
We’ve all seen the impacts on local industry of offshoring component manufacture to low-cost economies, particularly China.
This is true across the manufacturing supply chain, from primary manufacturers, to component suppliers, including the traditional sheet metal shop.
We have made a substantial investment in the latest automated and robotic technology across our own Melbourne factory shopfloor, to drive and deliver productive and cost efficiencies.
Our investment in automation supports high-quality, high-mix, low volume production and customisation, as well as fast lead times and rapid turnaround - supporting just-in-time production and lean manufacturing principles. Automation supports greater flexibility, smaller volumes, on demand production and specialisation. Our sheet metal manufacturing machine technology is supported by our investment in design software to assist prototype design and production process simulation to maximise manufacturing productivity.
This technology investment enables us to operate a complete lights-out sheet metal manufacturing facility.
Why do we believe in this investment?
Ultimately, we believe that our sheet metal manufacturing technology investment and production processes provides customer cost and productivity benefits that will, in many cases, enable cheaper production in Australia than overseas for a comparable quality outcome.
At FORM2000, we have undertaken our own quiet revolution – actively working to meet the challenges of the future through reengineering our approach to providing sheet metal manufacturing services.
*www.ifr.org/industrial-robots/statistics
