Embrace automation to stay ahead, advises Omron

South African companies will increasingly need to embrace automation and rapidly expanding technologies to maintain their global competitiveness, says Omron Electronics Country GM Victor Marques.

“The world is moving fast in this direction and developing countries like South Africa will need to keep up. We can turn it in our favour, particularly if we nurture the talent and innovation we have in South Africa.”

There is concern that increasing automation in the manufacturing sector could lead to job cuts, but Marques told Engineering News Online that greater adoption of automation creates an opportunity for establishing new careers.

“Countries that embrace automation and cutting-edge technology will shoot ahead. We can’t afford to be left behind. Rather than looking at automation as taking jobs, let’s prepare our young people, in particular, for emerging careers in this space. These are the maths and science jobs of the future,” Marques said at the Omron Innovation Conference, in Cape Town.

Industrial automation makes up the largest slice of Omron’s businesses across the world. Forty per cent of its global businesses are in the industrial automation sphere, with 15% supplying the automotive components sector, 10% the environmental solutions sector and 11% the healthcare sector.

These businesses produce and market control components and systems for factory automation, such as pick and place packaging machines, as well as industrial equipment. Machine automation covers everything from sensing, control systems, drives, robots and visualisation to quality control and inspection and switching components.

Omron employs 36 500 people, with offices in 22 countries, including South Africa.

Marques said South Africa had produced incredible innovators like Elon Musk, but more should be done to encourage young tech entrepreneurs to stay in South Africa and build their businesses in the country. 

He called on the government to offer more incentives to innovative tech companies in South Africa, which would encourage them to establishes businesses here, grow exports and create jobs. 

“We’ve got people exporting machines, but they could develop even further with government support. We’d like to see government offering more incentives to tech companies, as they do in countries like China and Turkey.”

Marques, meanwhile, highlighted that there is a strong shift towards sustainable products and practices.

Omron is developing more product solutions for pump systems that help reduce water wastage, hoisting cranes that use less energy and photovoltaic inverters for solar energy applications.

He also called for closer links between industry and universities in South Africa. He said there was plenty of scope for opportunities in mechatronics and greater integration between the electrical, mechanical and electronic fields.

“Graduates from universities come up with a lot of knowledge, but not necessarily what is needed right now.  There’s a lot of focus on building individual machines, but what’s really needed is a focus on integration.”

Increasingly, embedded robots and robotic modules are integrated into packaging machines. Omron is also using its own robotics and vision technology. In its Sysmac machine controller, one controller, one piece of software and one machine network are integrated to enable next-generation machine automation.