Could Robots Take Place Over India’s Employment?

According to the International Federation of Robotics, the Indian market for robots grew at a compound annual growth rate of 18 percent between 2012 and 2017. There were nearly 3,412 industrial robots sold during the period, which was 30 percent higher than the previous year. However, as the machines are fast making inroads into the MSME sector, India has an unemployment problem due to the creeping intrusion of cheaper and better robots into factory shop-floors.

Over the last few years, prices of industrial robots have halved in real terms, while this will also decline another 65 percent by 2025, as market study reports noted. Currently, industrial robots are becoming not just cheaper, but also more capable and comprehensible.

For instance, Vienna-based world's largest brick-maker Wienerberger took its first step into Asia and invested in India an INR 250 crore to develop its business in the country. To date, the plant produces around 70,000 blocks of hollow, chocolate-smooth blocks a day, the equivalent of 6 lakh conventional bricks and its entire operation is completely robotised. Robots are also used to be the preserve of large companies, like Hyundai and Maruti, but not anymore.

In Asia's other region, the Chinese market for robots presently is said to be around 250,000 pieces a year that is likely to quadruple in the coming days. And the market will be largely attributed by Fanuc, the Japanese robot manufacturer, which is setting up a plant to make a million robots a year in China, only for the Chinese market.

Automation, certainly, is no unfamiliar to shop-floors as a large number of factories across the world and India has been leveraging computer numerical control (CNC) machines for years. These machines enable operators to feed a program of instructions directly into a computer through a small board. Once the required tools loaded in the system, the rest is done automatically by the CNC machines that make use of these instructions to control machineries such as the grinder, milling machine, and lathe.

However, as these machines, so far, have been utilized for pick-and-place operations, the next-generation ones can perform a lot more. Universal Robots' cobots (collaborative robots), for instance, can work alongside humans. This upcoming transformation will leave enduring impacts on India's workforce, particularly in automotive, textile, and banking and financial services, aside from information technology.

As per a report, robotisation of the Indian manufacturing sector is just rolling out to take place. The nation's robot density, defined as the number of robots for every 10,000 workers, is 3, while the global average is 74 and that of the most robotised country, South Korea, is 631.