NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- Orders for factory robots in North America plunged by nearly one-third last year from 2022's record volume, according to the Association for Advancing Automation, a trade group for the robotics industry. Orders slipped further over the first six months of this year.
"Robots are getting less work at U.S. factories. Manufacturers are cutting back on purchases of automation equipment, executives said, as business slows on production lines and shop floors. More human workers are lining up for work again, too," reported The Wall Street Journal in its report on Monday about the development.
Automation equipment attracted heavy investment after the COVID-19 pandemic left many factory jobs unstaffed and hard to fill, between high absenteeism and workers seeking better pay or less physically demanding roles. Supply-chain bottlenecks further juiced demand as companies looked for ways to accelerate production when parts and materials became available, according to the report.
However, some companies that bought robots during the pandemic-driven labor crunch underestimated the maintenance and programming skill needed to deploy them to more complicated tasks.
Robot manufacturers said customers have become choosier about their investments. High interest rates and lower production volumes mean that it is taking companies longer to recoup the money spent on robots.
The automotive industry is the largest user of industrial robots in North America, but the sector's second-quarter orders for robots dropped 20 percent from the same period last year, the automation association said. Auto-industry robots represented 46 percent of all robot orders in the quarter, down from nearly 60 percent of orders in the same period in 2022, the report noted.
