Longmont Startup Week: Cheaper technology, labor shortage stokes demand for automation

LONGMONT — With automation technology less expensive and more accessible than ever, robots are becoming a more popular remedy for the manufacturing industry’s labor shortage. 

“We have a skilled worker shortage,” Colorado Advanced Manufacturing Alliance president Tim Heaton said this week during a Longmont Startup Week panel called “Using Automation to Solve Today’s Challenges — Do You Have the Next Great Idea?” As evidence, he cited more than 7,000 active Colorado manufacturing job postings online.

“Automation is a part of the solution” for manufacturers struggling to fill jobs, a problem that’s been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and early retirement from industry veterans, Heaton said.

Unfortunately, he said, most Colorado manufacturers are small businesses that haven’t historically been able to afford huge investments in automation.

Cory Diederich, a sales engineer In-Position Technologies LLC, recommended that manufacturers new to automation “start small and expand out.”

He added: “Everyday there is new technology coming out that makes [automation] more accessible for the end user.”

Kellen Schroeter, CEO and co-founder at Pattern Labs Inc., said company leaders should think about “what’s the minimum level of difficulty that I need to tackle in order to sustain my business.” 

Examples of activities that are “very labor intensive and in some cases very difficult to teach,” and potentially ripe for automation, include grinding, welding, polishing, painting, Diederich said. 

The increasing accessibility of artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the automation space, panelists said. 

AI, in addition, is a “combination of robotics and vision systems that are making things a lot easier,” said Diederich.

And while Schroeter noted that “it’s certainly a challenge to navigate the supply chain right now,” that challenge is often easier accomplished than solving the labor shortage.

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