Robots Save and Create Jobs

Jeff BurnsteinPresident

Association for Advancing Automation

The Real Threat to Jobs

• The inability to remain globally competitive

• Low productivity, poor quality, high costs• Failure to respond quickly to changing

customer demands

Robots Help Keep Companies Globally Competitive

• Improved productivity and quality• Lower overall costs• Faster response time• Safer, higher paying jobs

Shuttered Factories Destroy Communities

• Lower tax revenues• Job losses outside the factory• Abandoned buildings and increased crime• Poorer schools and declining real estate

values

Competing For Manufacturing Jobs

• US is competing with China to be the biggest manufacturer in the world.

• Manufacturing generates more associated jobs than any other sector.

• Every new job in manufacturing is generating 1.3 jobs in support functions.

• 94% of all manufacturing jobs are in small and medium sized companies.

US Manufacturing Dominated by Small and Medium Sized Companies

Challenges Small and Medium Sized Companies Face

• Cost

• Setup time and maintenance

• Flexibility and multi-tasking

Automate, Emigrate or Evaporate

• An operating factory with fewer employees is better than one with none

• Sending jobs overseas is not the panacea many companies expected

• Automating often allows companies to transform their business

Where Robot Use Rises, Unemployment Usually Falls

About 10 Million Jobs Created Directlyby Robotics through 2011

About 6 Million Manufacturing Jobs Lost InUS – Are Robots Really The Culprit?

Potential New Jobs Due toRobotics 2012 - 2016

New Applications

• Laboratory automation

• Composite manufacturing

• Hospital logistics

• Agile assembly

• Package handling in logistics

Common Sense Says that the Naysayers are Wrong

• Innovation has always led to growth and more jobs

• Robots are just better tools, not our masters

• We can’t even imagine the new products and industries that improved automation will help create

Suggested reading:www.brookings.edu/experts/winships

Jeff BurnsteinPresidentAssociation for Advancing Automation900 Victors WaySuite 140Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108 USA

Phone: 734-994-6088Email: jburnstein@a3automate.org