Companies are increasingly betting on reshoring or nearshoring with the aim of becoming more resilient in the face of global challenges. This is what emerges from the ABB global survey, which highlights a education gap important in the skills necessary for these strategies to be successful.
“The world is constantly evolving: companies are changing existing structures and adopting new technologies to future-proof their operations in the face of a host of challenges and uncertainties, with robotic automation playing a critical role”said Sami Atiya, president of ABB’s Robotics & Discrete Automation business. “We need a significant investment in continuing education to prepare our current and future workforce to thrive in an era of robotics and automation, which is important not only to deal with the widespread changes we are seeing, but also to create societies prosperous in the future.”
ABB’s 2022 survey of US and European business leaders revealed that 74% of European and 70% of US companies are planning to reshoring or nearshoring their operations to increase the resilience of their supply chain in response to labor shortagethe need for a more sustainable global footprint and global uncertainty.
Most of these companies consider that the automation is the factor that facilitate these changesas 75% of European and 62% of US companies surveyed plan to invest in robotics and automation in the next three years to facilitate this change in operations.
Despite this appetite for automation, ABB’s 2022 global education survey found a significant gap in the education and training required to ensure the skills needed to work in the world’s increasingly connected and automated workplaces. future.
Of education professionals surveyed globally, 80 percent believe robotics and automation will shape the future of employment in the next ten years, while only one in four educational institutions currently use robots as part of their teaching programs.
Global Robotics Education Program
To help bridge the skills gap, ABB has strengthened its global robotics and automation education program with new training centers, including its global innovation and training campus for €100 million in Austria.
The new centre, together with other new regional training centers in the UK, Berlin and Brazil, expands ABB’s training facilities to more than 40 sites worldwide, training more than 30,000 students from schools, colleges and universities. , as well as apprentices and workers each year.
These centers add to ABB’s existing educational offering, which consists of software packages, including ABB’s Wizard Easy programming, RobotStudio and RobotStudio AR Viewer App, as well as hardware in the form of collaborative robot cells and application packages. Through more than 100 global partnerships with schools and universities, ABB co-creates curriculum materials with educational institutions to help educate future generations and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.
“Change must happen now”Atiya added. “As companies turn to robotic automation to offset labor shortages, improve efficiency and increase resiliency, workers need the skills to use automation to get their jobs done and augment their own functions. Businesses must join forces and cooperate with educational institutions and governments to ensure that society is prepared for the jobs of the future. Only then can we fully utilize flexible automation and unlock the value of ongoing reindustrialization.”.
The ABB survey highlights the critical need for promote the teaching of robotics and automation. For more information, including ABB’s offering for education, examples of educational projects ABB is involved in with its robots and software, and a white paper explaining how teaching automation can help build the workforce. future, visit the ABB education portal page.
