Universal Robots’ urges SMEs to adopt robotic automation

KUALA LUMPUR May 14 — Universal Robots, a Denmark-based collaborative robots (cobots) technology market leader, has urged Malaysia’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to accelerate the adoption of robotic automation to remain competitive and efficient.

It said as companies faced rising costs for raw materials and a weak currency, leveraging automation to optimise production is a constant challenge.

Through cobots, which aims to bridge the gap between fully manual assembly and fully-automated manufacturing lines, it could potentially improve productivity for Malaysian SMEs in the manufacturing sector by up to 30 per cent.

“Collaborative robots will play a major role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. With the assistance of cobots, local manufacturers can achieve higher levels of efficiency and rapid productivity gains,” said its head of Southeast Asia and Oceania, Darrell Adams in a statement.

Adams also said Cobots helps automate and streamline repetitive and potentially unsafe processes thus, ensuring a safe work environment while increasing productivity and efficiency.

Currently, the average automation levels among local manufacturing firms are still low, with 80 per cent of companies are automating less than 50 per cent of their processes.

— BERNAMA