PACIFIC BASIN ECONOMIC COUNCIL
MAIN PAGE | SPEECHES & EDITORIALS | 1999 | TECHNOLOGY VS. LABOR

Technology vs. Labor Kiyoshi Kanitani President, Nachi-Fujikoshi Corp. Tuesday, May 18, 1999 The Challenges of the Next Century for the Pacific Basin 32nd International General Meeting of the Pacific Basin Economic Council Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre Hong Kong, China May 17-19, 1999 Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. It is my great honor to join this panel discussion on Technology Vs Labor and to have the opportunity to share my viewpoint.. My opinions and viewpoint are referenced from the position of an industrial robot supplier. It is well known that the word "Robot" was first used by the " R.U.R Rossum's Universal Robots" which was a drama written by Karel Capek and published in 1920. In the drama, the Robot was a humanoid. But originally, the word " Robot" comes from "Robota" which means labor in the Czech language. So we can assume there is a relation between the robot and labor from the very beginning. The description "Industrial Robot" was first used in the US beginning around 1960. This early prototype was made as a playback robot, which repeated the taught program like a tape recorder. Nachi, started in the robot business in 1969 with a hydraulic driven robot used for material handling. Later, beginning in 1980, Nachi developed an electric driven spot welding robot used primarily in the automotive industry. The electric driven and articulated model of the spot welding robot is well accepted in the automobile industry. Since the beginning, advanced hardware and software features have greatly improved the capability of the robot, but the basic structure has not changed significantly. The number of operating robots in the world is estimated at 710,000 according to published data in 1997. Within those numbers, 410,000 robots, which corresponds to approximately 60% of the total market, are operating in Japan. The primary reason why robots are popularly used in Japan today is due to ever tightening labor sources. More than one million of skilled labor positions were unable to be filled in 1995 as a result of more college bound students the decreasing birth rate in Japan. The second reason is for improvement in productivity and the requirement for reducing production costs. Increasing the quality of the product and the social/economical needs for the prevention of labor accidents or the improvement of working conditions for factory workers are also the reason robots are utilized. These issues strongly support the use of the robot in manufacturing. The largest users of industrial robot are the automobile industry followed by the electronics/electric industry. This basic customer and application structure has continued till now. For example, when we examine the welding robot in the automobile industry. The data demonstrates that in car production, the number of welding robots and the number of workers in automobile industry clearly show that the robots are installed as a solution for Japan's labor shortage. In addition to easing the labor shortage, robots contribute greatly to the increase in automobile production. From the beginning of welding robot technology, the robot has improved manufacturing productivity through high-speed motion tasks and factory floor space saving. The robot's high speed significantly improves productivity by working faster while the space saving factor increases the work density. These factors result in the higher productivity of a production line. A good example of increased productivity in automotive welding is in spot welding time including robot's travel time, which was 3sec in the early 80's , and now is 1.5sec. And concerning floor space utilization, the installed robot number for each automobile working station used to be only 4 robots, and now 6 to 8 robots per station is very common. When we view the past 20 years, the number of installed robots has been greatly increased, but the characteristic's of the robot's work has not changed. Today, the robot still executes the monotonous and repetitive work tasks so called "3K" in Japan- Tough, Dirty and Dark. New applications began to emerge during the middle 80's, the robot was introduced not only to "Plain Sheet Metal" - body lines as welding robots but also to final assembly line. There, the automation ratio's of machines to labor was much lower than the automated body shop. Automation of the final assembly lines of automotive plants was basically just evolving in the 80's. But in the 90's, due to higher automation cost, the cost of labor was re-evaluated. Production automation must be evaluated carefully for both safety and economic justification. Highly automated lines in the final assembly, require intelligent sensors and complicated robotic grippers. The range of proven and supportable applications for these technologies is still quite limited. It is nearly impossible to document all the sensory data that is required for a robot to process at the speed and recognition accuracy of a human being. It is today far too expensive to design and build a robot that is as flexible and capable of adapting to any application that a human being can be taught. There is no multi-purpose robot hand, we must design specifically for each application purpose. Hence robot usage has become limited to monotonous and repetitive work found in the factory environment. Just before the booming of robot industry, The Japan Robot Association published their vision in 1979. In this vision, it was projected that the robot would become more intelligent and would be utilized in a random, non- repeatable environment such as agriculture, construction, or transportation/logistics. These areas are still expected to grow but are heavily dependent on sensory and control technologies that are still emerging. Currently the development targets for industrial use of robots are for productivity improvement. This is an essential requirement for production equipment along with Information Technology, which is critical to the globalization and networking of other technologies. For the spot welding robot, specialization and more application specific focus will dominate the industry rather than the general feature development for the robot itself. For example, an electric servomotor drives the welding gun in the future instead of the currently used pneumatic cylinder approach. The stroke of the weld tips is controlled as an axis of robot. Thereby, the welding process is optimized and the welding speed is made faster. Specially dedicated robots for double- or triple-level layouts will be developed. Easy operation of the robot while providing a simple method to improve maintenance is required for globalization. The information for supporting production management and maintenance work is transferred via network very much like the Internet today. The standardization of operations and networks will lead to distribution of robots on a global scale. Worldwide standardization of programming, interfacing and training will be required now to insure smooth efficient application of automation and robots on a global scale. Last year, research lasting 5 years began on human type robots with industry-university-government cooperation lead by M.I.T.I was started. The target for the project is to develop the robot for more intelligent applications, but no one can describe clearly the future image or applications that will be developed by this research. For at least the next 5 years or so, there will not be any specific changes for industrial robots or application areas. While the industrial robot releases workers from monotonous and simple repetitive tasks, it contributes to the growth of people in safer, more challenging endeavors. The robot is a tool of users providing productivity and quality improvement and serving its supporters in worldwide competition. Thank you for your attention.