Solid growth for robotics in the year 2000

Citation

Weichbrodt, B. and Delgado, K. (2001), "Solid growth for robotics in the year 2000", Industrial Robot, Vol. 28 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2001.04928fab.018

Solid growth for robotics in the year 2000

Solid growth for robotics in the year 2000

Keywords: Robotics

The order volume for robots grew well on most markets in 2000. Our estimate for the world growth is 15 percent compared to 1999. There were mostly industrial robot applications, some inside but probably even more outside the automotive industry. The already well-established robot suppliers continued strong. The growth, however, was quite different on different markets. Leading indicators for the robotics growth in 2001 are also quite positive.

After having talked to a few of our leading robot suppliers, and also pulled out some of the material in our recently published ECE/IFR News Release, I would like to summarise the robotics market situation early in 2001 around the world as follows.

In Europe, the market grew well in most countries. The overall volume growth estimate for 2000 is 15-25 per cent relative to 1999! The big robot manufacturers dominated the market. There were several large orders from the automotive industry, but also a very strong growth in the general industry. In North America, robot orders were actually down about 15 per cent compared to 1999, but this was after two very strong growth years 1998-1999. The year 2000 had relatively few major automotive orders but a very strong growth in the general industry. Much of the reduction probably comes from natural variations in automotive orders, but it is also possible that it indicates some slowdown in the US economy.

The South East Asian robot market, outside Japan, was really booming in 2000! Unofficially, we estimate the growth to about 50 per cent relative to 1999! This includes major increases for robots in the electronics industry, cleanroom robots for wafer handling and more. Interesting to note that this very major growth in Asia, also includes Korea, our host for the ISR 2001 Symposium, growing strongly, mostly outside the automotive area. The big Japanese robot market has also started growing in 2000, possibly 10 per cent compared to 1999, after a long struggle in the past several years.

The summary of the above, which amounts to about 15 per cent growth for the world market, makes 2000 a strong year for world robotics, but quite varying for different areas of the world. Some of the long-term growth is most likely stimulated by the continued lowering of robot prices compared with the price for manual labour. This is a very interesting development, which is being commented on extensively in World Robotics 2000.

Leading indicators for 2001 show hope for a continued growth of 10-15 per cent. The IFR Newsletter will follow this development closely. In our next issue we plan to include a new current Trend Report after the first quarter of 2001.

Bjorn Weichbrodt and Kerstin DelgadoIFR Secretariat