In a welding factory of a manufacturing enterprise in the Pearl River Delta, we saw a scene like this:

On the production line of the production workshop, dozens of welders are fully armed, lowering their heads to rush production, and welding flowers are splashed everywhere; And just a few meters away from the workers, the factory invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to install several industrial robots, but quietly motionless.

It can be said that whether it is for the application enterprises that buy and use these industrial robots, or for the industrial robot integration enterprises, professional engineers are scarce resources. There is even a joke in industrial robot integration companies called “buy robots, send engineers.”

Why do factory owners spend a lot of investment costs to introduce industrial robots, but often shut down, unable to really solve the problem of employment?

Why do some industrial robot integration enterprises, stationed engineers can not withdraw back, so that there is a shortage of engineers in subsequent projects?

In the process of industrial upgrading from “world factory” to “intelligent manufacturing”, economic growth is inevitably required to shift from relying on demographic dividend to relying on human capital dividend. However, if the lack of experience, learning and creative ability of technical personnel engaged in industrial robot programming, installation, commissioning, maintenance, repair and other work, “machine replacement” is difficult to achieve the expected effect, capital replacement of labor will not be worth the loss.

The fundamental reason for this situation is that the industrial robots that are now “busy” on the production line are too “smart”.

In the view of Kunzhong Capital, in the next 5-10 years, industrial robots will usher in a new wave of intelligent upgrading, and will also create new entrepreneurship and investment opportunities.

With the continuous development of intelligent manufacturing industries such as new energy vehicles and electronics, the market demand for industrial robots continues to grow, and the growth potential of industrial robots is still very broad;
Intelligence is expected to greatly expand the application scenarios and production efficiency of industrial robots, especially for the production of small batch and non-standard products. Intelligence will be the key to break through the bottleneck of cost efficiency.

01, the development status of China’s industrial robots: the number of explosive growth, but the deployment is far from the ceiling

According to the data released by the IFR (International Federation of Robotics) at the 2022 World Robot Conference, the new installation of industrial robots in the world in 2021 reached 517,000 units, an increase of 31%. The cumulative industrial robot stock reached 3.47 million units. According to the application process classification, the handling robot accounted for the highest proportion, accounting for 44.5%; Followed by welding robot, accounting for 18.6%; According to industry categories, industrial robots in the electronic and electrical industry accounted for the highest proportion, reaching 26.5%; This was followed by the automotive industry at 23.0%.

The application of industrial robots in China is far ahead in the world, as shown in the figure below, and the installation volume even exceeds the sum of the rest of the world, especially the rapid penetration of the electronics and automotive fields has driven the overall scale of the increase.

But the deployment of Chinese industrial robots is far from reaching the ceiling. Considering the current deployment density of robots in Japan and South Korea, the number of industrial robots needed in China is between 2.2 million and 4.5 million. Considering that the development of intelligent robots in the future will greatly improve the breadth and depth of robot applications, we believe that the actual demand for industrial robots in China will eventually exceed the above range. Taking the highest deployment density of industrial robot, namely, automobile industry as an example, the current deployment density in our country is still significantly lower than that of other developed countries. Taking into account the developing trend of electric vehicles in our country, we believe that the industrial density of robot in our country will surely lead by world in the future.