Industrial robotic automation has attracted the attention of industry fear-mongers and hopefuls alike for taking over jobs — many of them undesirable in the first place — and bringing new levels of efficiency and workplace safety.

Automation technology is now spilling out of industries such as automotive and electronics and into food and agriculture – and it couldn’t be too soon.

Jack Uhl, sales manager – CPG (Consumer Products Group) for Yaskawa America, Inc.’s Motoman Robotics Division recently wrote a compelling blog post outlining how “food just got faster.”

In the post, Uhl makes an analogy to the wheel that is the food industry and how automation must become the rim tying the spokes together.

Uhl asserts that beverage production facilities are using rotary fillers for soft drinks, wine, milk and water which guide containers into turrets where they are filled by the hundreds – greatly speeding up production lines. Uhl then makes note of how automation is being used today to eliminate contamination in food processing plants with sterile, human-and-bacteria-free production lines, saving the US economy millions of dollars. Finally, Uhl points to the issue of labor costs and associated medical bills associated with injuries developed from repetitive, exhausting and dangerous jobs and how automation eliminates these problems with uncompromisingly strong and resilient industrial robots.

Uhl’s points above are all great ones, but there are two important points to take away from this:

Automation’s emergence in the food and agriculture industries is inevitable and already happening, And blue-collar workers in these fields don’t need to panic about job loss.

Industrial automation has been an explosive force in the automotive industry, which essentially gave birth to the industrial robot, to alleviate employees from back-breaking, demeaning jobs and elevating them into more stimulating, enjoyable and valuable positions.



