By John Revill
ZURICH--A German brewer established in the 1790s has found a
21st-century answer to increasing profitability: robots.
Nine years ago, Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus AG was
struggling with production bottlenecks that weighed on its profits.
Workers couldn't package and crate the company's beer quickly
enough to stock bars and supermarkets, prompting customers to buy
other brands.
Since introducing an ABB Ltd. IRB7600 robot in 2005, however,
the company has sped up its delivery times, particularly at peak
holiday periods. The robot does the heavy lifting, sorting through
30,000 bottles an hour, allowing the company to reassign its human
employees to its bottling and packaging operations.
"We wanted to increase production and efficiency" across the
company, Chief Executive Christian Rasch said on a recent Wednesday
as a robot painted in the company's signature traffic-light red
stacked cases of beer behind him. The brewery, which hasn't changed
its recipe in more than two centuries, was so impressed it bought
four more ABB robots.
ABB, Fanuc Corp. and other robot makers are counting on Rothaus
and a variety of small and medium-size companies to fuel the next
leg of their growth. Historically driven by automobile companies
and electrical-and-electronics makers, robot companies are finding
many smaller businesses want to automate dirty and repetitious
tasks that were typically handled with good old-fashioned elbow
grease.
In Murten, western Switzerland, a local bakery is using robots
to bag pretzels, grabbing them off the production line while
they're still hot. In the U.K., a Yorkshire brickworks has robots
removing fired blocks from the kiln. In a New York hotel, robots
have begun serving as porters, delivering luggage to guest
rooms.
Data on the use of robots at smaller companies is hard to come
by, and automobile and electronics manufacturers remain the
industry's biggest customers. But the International Federation of
Robotics, an industry association, said sales to all industries
excluding the big buyers rose 10% in 2013, with growth coming from
the metal, food-making and chemicals industries. By comparison,
sales to the auto industry rose 4%. Sales of robots rose 12% to
$9.5 billion, while sales of robot systems, which includes conveyor
belts and other machinery, were $29 billion.
Robot makers are trying to encourage small companies by making
their machines easier to use. Many are concentrating their
research-and-development efforts on streamlining interfaces so that
novices feel comfortable operating them.
Zurich-based ABB is working on a robot that customers can
program by moving the arms to perform a desired action, the same
way a parent might guide a child assembling blocks. The company,
which expects to bring the new robot to market in April 2015, wants
to eventually build one that doesn't require an instruction
manual.
"The vision is for us to make robots as simple to use as a
smartphone," said Per Vegard Nerseth, who runs ABB's robot
division. "A lot of the smaller companies, such as bakeries," he
said, "may have qualified bakers, for example, but not lots of
robot technicians."
Japan's Fanuc overcame skepticism at Marshalls, an Elland,
England-based building-supply company, by offering the potential
customer a trial robot for six months. Marshalls used the robot to
perform a chore that was unpopular with its human employees:
placing concrete slabs in an oven and removing the blocks after
they've been baked.
After six weeks, Marshalls could see the Fanuc R2000iB robot was
making a difference and placed an order for five. Since then, it
has bought more and now has 63 robots toiling at its 11 plants.
Chris Sumner, who runs Fanuc in Europe, estimates roughly 80% of
Fanuc's European customers are small and midsize businesses, and
the number is growing by 20% every year. Small businesses generally
buy one or two robots at a time, but Fanuc is trying to encourage
more automation: The company runs training classes for customers
considering a robot and set up a dedicated hotline for its smaller
customers.
"Small companies are concerned they will not get the service of
the bigger customers," Mr. Sumner said. He says Fanuc can devote
more resources to servicing smaller enterprises because many bigger
companies have in-house engineers.
Kuka AG, a German robot maker, has about 7,500 orders for robots
in Germany, roughly a fifth of which are for smaller projects,
according to Joerg Winter, who runs sales in the country. Many of
those customers are small and midsize businesses, a customer
segment that is growing, he says. Kuka robots range in price from
EUR13,000 ($15,800) to EUR200,000.
At Rothaus, the German brewer, robots have helped the company
speed up packaging and overcome staff shortages, a problem in the
sparsely populated Black Forest region.
Before the robot--nicknamed Roger-Tor after the manager of the
packaging line--was introduced, employees were unloading 24-bottle
crates of beer and repackaging them into more-popular six-packs.
Over the course of a day, workers would slow down and become prone
to dropping bottles.
Now, the output has climbed to 250 million bottles a year, four
times its output 20 years ago. Sales reached EUR80 million and
pretax profit hit EUR20 million in 2013.
The company has since installed robots at its filling plant. The
robots lift kegs for cleaning and then fill them with beer. The
robots then sort the full kegs, which weigh 139 pounds, for
delivery.
"Nobody wants to do this boring, heavy work," said Mr. Rasch,
the chief executive. "We couldn't imagine living without a
robot."
Write to John Revill at john.revill@wsj.com
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