Bringing Jobs and Bridging the Skills Gap with Automation

Anti-robot sen­ti­ments are not unheard of, in fact a lot of robot apoc­a­lypse fear and fin­ger point­ing (at robots) has ensued. Change is a scary thing to face; a dis­rup­tion of the norm. Jeff Burn­stein, Pres­i­dent of RIA says, ​“If we focus on our fears, we will miss the opportunities.”

The growth in robot­ics is open­ing many new job oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple who can pro­gram, install, run, and main­tain robots. Automa­tion is help­ing to save and cre­ate jobs. 

Jeff Burnsetein of RIA and Ritch Ramey from RAMTEC at Tri-Rivers Career Cen­ter pre­sent­ed in front of Con­gress last week to help con­tin­ue the dia­logue for fill­ing the gaps asso­ci­at­ed with robot automa­tion. It was a valu­able dis­cus­sion with encour­ag­ing infor­ma­tion to con­tin­ue for­ward into the future of automation.

The graph below was pro­vid­ed dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion. It speaks for itself- as indus­tri­al robots are made, shipped, and put to work, the unem­ploy­ment rate con­tin­ues to decrease.

McK­in­sey and Com­pa­ny wrote an Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry titled ​“Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Work­force tran­si­tions in a time of automa­tion.” The worst-case sce­nario by 2030 is that 800 mil­lion jobs are dis­placed glob­al­ly by automa­tion, 890 mil­lion jobs created.

From the begin­ning of time, tech­no­log­i­cal advances have changed the nature of jobs. From the rail­road to the com­put­er, these jobs have evolved. Technology’s con­stant­ly evolv­ing his­to­ry has shown that suc­cess is dri­ven by dynam­ic inno­va­tions and con­stant change that lib­er­ate humans from back break­ing and time-con­sum­ing labor. Dur­ing the agri­cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion, Amer­i­cans were able to pur­sue a wide range of advanced jobs off the farm. The inter­net has vast­ly ben­e­fit­ed and con­nect­ed the world while also cre­at­ing mil­lions of jobs for Amer­i­cans alone. 

This job lib­er­a­tion and evo­lu­tion is pro­vid­ing for more time and invest­ment in new ideas and com­pa­nies for the future. It is impor­tant to adapt and evolve with the times. These times are show­ing automa­tion is the key to help indus­tries stay com­pet­i­tive on a glob­al lev­el. ​“The inabil­i­ty to com­pete is the biggest threat to jobs, not automa­tion,” says Burnstein. 

Automa­tion has allowed and encour­aged com­pa­nies to expand their capa­bil­i­ties, reduce costs, and increase pro­duc­tion. This can help busi­ness­es con­tin­u­al­ly enter new mar­kets, gen­er­ate prof­its, bring in addi­tion­al invest­ments, and stay com­pet­i­tive on a glob­al scale. Automa­tion also sup­ports the entire sup­ply chains and community.

Address­ing the Skills Gap

While automa­tion is impor­tant, skilled work­ers con­tin­ue to be key to man­u­fac­tur­ers’ suc­cess. It is impor­tant to keep com­pa­nies com­pet­i­tive by train­ing work­ers in the right fields to bridge the gap need­ed to auto­mate man­u­fac­tur­ing processes. 

What is the skills gap? As automa­tion con­tin­ues to increase and spread across the globe, it will con­tin­ue to pro­duce nec­es­sary jobs to keep sys­tems run­ning. Cur­rent­ly there is not enough hands-on learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that incor­po­rate real-world automa­tion sys­tems being used in indus­try. The learn­ing curve is still sig­nif­i­cant for grad­u­ates enter­ing the workplace. 

This means there is an esti­mat­ed 2.0 mil­lion jobs that will be unful­filled due to the skills gap.

Enter RAMTEC.

RAMTEC stands for Robot­ics & Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Edu­ca­tion Col­lab­o­ra­tive, it is the world’s top rec­og­nized robot­ics certification.

RAMTEC helps pre­pare peo­ple of all ages for the future that will con­sist of intel­li­gent machines, con­nect­ed sys­tems, and nec­es­sary peo­ple to help oper­ate robot­ics. Its goal is to help close the skills gap in automa­tion by bring­ing hands-on learn­ing to stu­dents of all skill lev­els, show­ing them how to best oper­ate and evolve with the robot­ics revolution. 

“It’s impor­tant that kids start under­stand­ing the con­cept of robot­ics,” says Ritch Ramey, RAMTEC Engi­neer­ing Coor­di­na­tor. ​“We’re going to see it expand prob­a­bly ten­fold in the use of robots over the next 15 to 20 years. They should at least know the basics of robotics.”

In the graph below you can see the con­tin­ued growth of expo­sure to automa­tion for stu­dents of all ages, thanks to RAMTEC.

Know­ing the basics of robot­ics will be extreme­ly help­ful and ben­e­fi­cial. Stu­dents can prac­tice using the mobile edu­ca­tion carts and large pay­load robots. Most of the train­ing is done on a teach pen­dant, which is rare and a huge advan­tage when com­pared to all oth­er robot­ic edu­ca­tion options. Stu­dents can also learn to design and engi­neer new sys­tems for man­u­fac­tur­ing cus­tomers at RAMTEC.

“Our stu­dents have to do exact­ly what the indus­try peo­ple do,” says Ramey, an instruc­tor. ​“The same amount of time, same assign­ments, same e‑learning, and same tests to get their credentialing.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, stu­dents will learn the nec­es­sary build­ing blocks for future engi­neers or robot­ics tech­ni­cians, such as robot­ic weld­ing, PLCs hydraulics, pneu­mat­ics, CNCs,computer-aided design, 3D print­ing, and expect­ed to be added soon are vision and the Cis­co platform. 

As you can see, RAMTEC is doing an incred­i­ble job of keep­ing up with the quick­ly advanc­ing and inter-con­nect­ed indus­tri­al world. RAMTEC hopes to con­tin­ue extend­ing its loca­tions, bring­ing advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and robot­ics expo­sure to kids of all ages. 

Mean­while, the robots are con­tin­u­ing to take over the hard work and prov­ing that automa­tion inno­va­tions can indeed rep­re­sent new and con­tin­u­al job creation. 

If you are inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about robots, con­tact Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and ABB. Our staff will work with you to help you design and build the best robot­ic sys­tem for you and your facility.