RISE OF THE COBOTS
Recent research indicates that rather than being worried about job losses , industrial workers are in fact ready and willing to embrace robot co-workers . A Global Growth Index report commissioned by Epicor in 2018 found that 41 % of young people want the opportunity to work with the latest innovations , while 33 % of millennials want to be at the cutting edge of new developments .
Robot co-workers can also help relieve a strained workforce from manual or difficult tasks - freeing up human workers to undertake the more creative , or profit-driving , aspects of their roles . Using this new-found time , staff are able to focus on new ideas , innovations and higher-value work for the business including business strategy , advanced analysis , and creative thinking . More time spent on these tasks will help boost revenues , enabling companies to invest further in employees so that additional business benefits can be realised .
Investing in robot co-workers can also help alleviate the uncertain , tumultuous times that UK manufacturers currently operate within . Cobots could help generate major benefits for UK productivity — which , according to the Office for National Statistics , currently lags more than 20 % behind the US , France , and Germany . In the UK , an astonishing 90 % of finishing work is still done by hand . Yet research by the collaborative Symplexity project indicates that robots could shift the balance to about 20 %, with the remainder being completed by robots under human supervision . This would unlock massive productivity benefits for manufacturers .
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