Oh no!!
In recession, Japanese lay off robots
http://post-gazette.com/pg/09194/983564-115.stm
Monday, July 13, 2009
By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times
KITAKYUSHU, Japan -- They may be the most efficient workers in the world. But in the global downturn, they are having a tough time finding jobs.
Japan's legions of robots, the world's largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets.
At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair.
They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.
At the same time, the future is looking less bright. Tighter finances are injecting a dose of reality into some of Japan's more fantastic projects -- like pet robots and cyborg receptionists -- that could cramp innovation long after the economy recovers.
"We've taken a huge hammering," said Koji Toshima, president of Yaskawa, Japan's largest maker of industrial robots.
Profit at the company plunged by two-thirds, to 6.9 billion yen, about $72 million, in the year ended March 20, and it predicts a loss this year.
Across the industry, shipments of industrial robots fell 33 percent in the last quarter of 2008, and 59 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Japan Robot Association.
Tetsuaki Ueda, an analyst at the research firm Fuji Keizai, expects the market to shrink by as much as 40 percent this year. Investment in robots, he said, "has been the first to go as companies protect their human workers."
While robots can be cheaper than flesh-and-blood workers over the long term, the upfront investment costs are much higher.
In 2005, more than 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan, about 40 percent of the global total, representing 32 robots for every 1,000 manufacturing employees, according to a report by Macquarie Bank. A 2007 government plan for technology policy called for 1 million industrial robots to be installed by 2025. That will almost certainly not happen.
"The recession has set the robot industry back years," Mr. Ueda said.
That goes for industrial robots and the more cuddly toy robots.
In fact, several of the lovable sort have already become casualties of the recession.
The robot maker Systec Akazawa filed for bankruptcy in January, less than a year after it introduced its miniature PLEN walking robot at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
First published on July 13, 2009 at 12:00 am