Editor's Note: Six robotics industry executives, including the executive vice president of the Robotic industries Association, the industry trade group, offer their views on the state of the industry and general trends, now and in the near future.

Donald A. Vincent

Executive Vice President

Robotic Industries Association

Let's face it: 2001 and most of 2002 have been difficult for the North American robotics industry. Like all capital equipment suppliers, robot manufacturers have been hammered by the slowdown in the U.S. economy, the aftermath of 9/11 and the stock market malaise.

The good news is that the robotics industry is suffering the same woes as other established technologies such as machine tools and computers. No longer is our industry considered a futuristic technology whose fortunes are tied strictly to the technology's ability to perform: Robotics is an established, maturing technology that will do well in good economic times and suffer in tough times. The technology is reliable and proven. Robotics companies are around for the long haul; they can survive the economic downturns and will be ready for the next upturn.

And, it has become clear to everyone that robots play a vital role in improving productivity. Despite the U.S. recession in 2001, productivity rose, and robots and other flexible automation technologies were a major reason why. The investments that companies made in robotics in the late 1990s clearly are paying off.

Manufacturing companies in just about every industry recognize that robots also can help them speed time to market, improve quality and lower costs. There are countless success stories from companies in automotive, consumer goods, electronics, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and many other industries.

But, when companies hit rough economic times and start watching their spending closely, they often stop making purchases and try to make do with equipment they already have. This will only work for so long, at which time companies must make new investments in technology in order to compete in the global marketplace.

Eventually manufacturing companies will resume purchases of technologies like robots that they know can help them. This pent-up demand for robots will help the industry return to growth at some point soon.

One of the drivers of the next move forward is likely to be the application of robotics to new markets. The use of robots in medical and lab applications continues to grow and holds great promise for the future. Robotic meat processing, bartending, food preparation and bomb disposal are some of the innovative applications that haven't begun to realize their full commercial promise. And there's always the "holy grail" of the useful home robot; it will come to pass at some point, creating a vast new market for robotics technology.

However, in the near term, the greatest growth potential remains in the tried-and-true factory applications for material handling, welding, assembly, dispensing and coating, material removal and related industrial tasks. These applications can be provided by a wide-range of experienced suppliers who collectively have thousands of success stories to their credit in the 40-plus years that robots have been used in factories.

All of us at RIA welcome your thoughts on how our trade association can best serve you and your company. Feel free to contact me at any time at 734-994-6088 or at dvincent@robotics.org.

Michael Ferrara

Director

Epson

America

Factory Automation/Robotics

Most of us in the industry agree that 2001 was a difficult year for robotics companies. Some of us will even call it an understatement. In terms of the numbers of robots sold, 2001 will be a year that most of us in the robotics industry would prefer to forget about.

Earlier this year, many of us believed recovery was in sight. The PMI was well into its climb from the October 2001 low of 39.5 percent toward that magical 50 percent, which indicates that manufacturing is expanding. In February it broke the 50 percent barrier and averaged about 55 percent until July, when it dropped to just above 50 percent. The Capacity Utilization Index hit a low in December 2001 and has been slowly climbing toward the 80 percent mark we look for to indicate expansion. Consumer confidence has been up since November of last year and didn't begin moving down until June and July. Despite these positive indicators, we are still not seeing manufacturers rushing to purchase capital equipment this year, for a variety of reasons. With the impact of 9/11, corporate scandals and the stock market, the economy just hasn't gotten the break that it needs. It's not as bad as last year but is much slower than most of us would like. At a recent meeting of industry leaders, someone described the current st ate of the robotics industry as "bouncing along the bottom."

For most of us, that's actually good news. Bouncing along the bottom is much better than the bottom developing a basement or falling out completely. There is no place to go but up in the long term. We will probably see a few more companies pull out of the automation markets and a few more consolidations occur before it's all over. The prognosis for 2003 is healthy for those who survive. Success is about fulfilling the needs of your customers in good times and bad. At the recent Assembly Technology Exposition, customers saw many new products, features and benefits from the major robotic players. Even in these tough economic times, most robot companies are committing the R&D dollars necessary to develop the new technologies that their customers are demanding. Consequently, robots have become more user friendly, faster, very repeatable and very reliable, and prices have been reduced dramatically. All of these positive changes will continue to contribute to convincing manufacturers to consider robots. Plus, ther e are still many untapped industries and applications waiting to benefit from robotics.

Provided the economies of the world cooperate, I expect that 2003 will show some improvement over 2002. In terms of robot sales, I don't believe we will see the record numbers of 1999 or even the second best sales year of 2000. We will not see a "V type" recovery that all of us would like to be able to talk about. This will be a slower recovery than any of us would have preferred. But the good news is that, after bouncing on the bottom for most of 2002, we should see a slight but definite upward grade in 2003.

Craig Jennings President Motoman Inc.

Trends in Robotic Automation

* Use of PC-based tools together with integrated high-accuracy calibration to deliver true offline programming solutions, eliminating the need for manual touchup of positions.

* Use of localized buffer/stocker automation in semiconductor process applications using centralized stocker.

* Use of more application-specific, PC-based process tools that operate as a programming layer on top of simulation engines, such as in press brake automation, palletizing, coating and other applications.

* Use of multiple robot control to create autonomous robot cells that minimize operating labor and equipment cost by using the robot as both part-conveyance device and part positioner.

* Use of more complex welding and cutting systems by automotive Tier 1 suppliers, with robotic loading and unloading to cells in which multiple robots are welding, to minimize floor space and labor requirements.

* Use of overhead mounting of robots, either on rails or radial/sweep bases to maximize throughput and minimize floor space requirements in machine-tending applications.

* Increased use of e-commerce for purchase of spare parts, scheduling training and other orders.

* Increased use of robots in life-science applications for iterative clinical or drug discovery applications.

* Increased use of robots in service applications including, for example, dispensing of prescription drugs, to maximize throughput and minimize labor requirements.

* Increased use of robots in medical applications, including everything from assisting surgeons to positioning patients for cancer treatments.

* Increased use of robots in coating applications in general industry.

* Increased use of robots together with new technologies, including vibratory or static knives and routing.

* Increased use of robots in bakery applications to maximize throughput and minimize labor requirements.

Joe Campbell

Vice President, Marketing Adept Technology Inc.

Life in the automation business is tough. The Purchase Manager's Index is headed back to the contraction line, manufacturing utilization is stuck in the doldrums, the telecom industry has huge capital funding (to say nothing of credibility) problems and the PC industry needs another magic software OS or application to drive the purchase of new upgraded systems. Everyone in the industry is feeling the pain. What's a robot vendor to do?

The answer is: Focus on basics. Even if you have to reduce your workforce, make sure the remaining staff are focused on customers. Simple acts like calling each and every customer and prospect works wonders at uncovering projects and service revenue. Re-evaluate your processes; if it's not adding real value, stop doing it. A downturn like this actually makes it easier to implement big changes in an organization and its processes. Get your new products in order, and have them ready to launch when the upturn begins.

And there will be an upturn. The core flexible automation market drivers remain intact: miniaturization, quality, product life cycles, product mix. Manufacturing demands automation, and successful companies will be ready to serve that demand when the market comes back with new products, higher levels of support and world-class service.

Bernard F. Sagan Jr.

Director of Sales, General Industries KUKA Robotics

KUKA Robotics looks at the robot market in two distinct categories, automotive and general industry. Automotive is changing, with more assembly and manufacturing migrating from nameplate manufacturers to Tier 1 suppliers. This means that traditional automotive and general Industry roles have become closer. The overall view of customers in both automotive and general industry is to look toward value. While price is important, value is more important. In the past manufacturers had their own engineering staff that assisted in the development and running of the production line. This is no longer true. In an effort to become lean, manufacturers have divested themselves of many skilled positions. Thus, it is even more important that a production line not only be flexible to meet market demands, it must be robust, easy to operate and easy to repair. We come back to value again. Recent experience has shown that in this economic downturn, customers are price conscious, but they will not sacrifice value for price.

Because most manufacturers do not have their own engineering staff, they need to contract a robotics company that builds systems or a systems house that integrates robots. Systems integrators make their income by providing process expertise to end users. Cash flow is an important part of their survival. The cash-flow motivation results in getting the hardware in at the last moment, adding processes and programming knowledge to the system quickly and shipping the system before cash flow begins eating into profits.

Systems integrators value tools that can make their job easier, help with cash flow and make their process knowledge shine. An example is the use of PC-based robot controllers. While the PC-based controller costs more then a proprietary controller, the PC allows the easy and relatively low-cost addition of value-added options. While the price of a robot with these options is slightly higher, the value to the systems integrator is much greater. Items like Soft PLC and DeviceNet allow the integrator to program and deploy systems 20 percent to 30 percent faster and at less cost than using the old PLC and hard wire method.

Thus, whether robot manufacturers add value by building systems or by adding technology to help integrators, that selling "boxes" or "naked robots" will not pass muster in this current economic climate.

Hitoshi Hibi

General Manager

Factory Automation Division

DENSO Wave Inc.

The flexibility of today's industrial robots has progressed to the point where it is possible to operate a lean production system that can handle various types of products in small production lots. At DENSO Wave Inc., a DENSO group company that develops, manufactures and sells factory automation systems and products, we believe that robot cells and the integration of information technologies with robot systems will be key to developing next-generation robots capable of supporting intelligent, productive, reliable and low-cost production systems.

DENSO Wave has already reduced the cost of production systems by creating robots that can do as many different jobs as possible. To achieve additional cost reduction for production systems in the future, we think "robot cell production" will be the key technology. The rapidly improving performance of CPUs or memory will also improve robot performance. It will be possible to integrate the functions of various robot-related equipment such as programmable controllers and vision systems into a robot cell.

We believe that developing network technology for the smooth integration of robots and information systems or Internet is very important. With the rapid advance of information and communication technologies, we are able manage and use a vast amount of data, regardless of location and size of data. Requests to merge these technologies with robots are increasing because robots are used for advanced production system management handling large quantities of data, or for global production system management and maintenance. The realization of both of these developments will result in new production systems that are intelligent, productive, reliable and low cost.

DENSO Wave believes that the robot will be the key technology used to reinforce production capabilities and capacities.