Industrial Robots Fall Short Of Workers

Hindering the development of industrial robot industry in China, may not be the scarcity of market demand, but other unexpected aspects, such as enterprises bought industrial robots, but can not recruit qualified operation and maintenance personnel.

Data from the International Federation of Robotics showed that the operational inventory of industrial robots in China exceeded 940,000 units in 2020 and will break the 1 million mark in 2021.

Installed at the same time, China's industrial robots are still in a rapid increase, when new crown the most serious epidemic in 2020, China's industrial robot installed capacity of 168000 units, up 20%, 44% share of global shipments, this is the highest value on record individual countries, also led to the global sales of new robot slightly increased by 0.5%.

Number has more than one million units, and also in the rapid growth of industrial robots, need operation and maintenance of personnel are also increased dramatically, however, because industry started late, the robot industry in our country have not ready, related and there is a large demand, and there is a widening trend, if not reverse this situation, There may soon be a situation where industrial robot products are easy to obtain and operation and maintenance personnel are hard to find.

Lack of basic employees in the robot industry.

In recent years, the shortage of human resources in Chinese manufacturing industry has become increasingly fierce, so is the industrial robot industry, "Planning Guide for the Development of Manufacturing Personnel" pointed out that at present, the ratio of talent supply and demand in China's robot industry is only 1:10, including the gap of talent in the field of industrial robots related to about 3 million, is expected to reach 4.5 million in 2025.

This year people club department released the latest data also show that in 100 "the most short of workers" list, manufacturing workers missing situation continues, there are 43 career belongs to the manufacturing related personnel, intelligent manufacturing engineering degrees deficiency increase at the same time, the industrial robot system operator "and other professional qualifying rise, lack of engineering degrees.

According to the Development Report of Online Learning Platform for New Occupations jointly released by China Employment Training Technical Guidance Center of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and Alibaba Dingding, there will be a huge demand for new professionals in the next five years, with both industrial robot system operators and operation and maintenance personnel expected to reach 1.25 million.

For any industry, the shortage of personnel is the most fatal. Only when the supply of talents matches the development of the industry is the healthiest development state. However, in the next few years, we will not be able to meet the demand of about 2.5 million talents.

The reason for this is that our training of relevant talents is relatively late. It was not until 2015 that there was a highly effective approved "robot engineering" major in China; In vocational education, preparation is also inadequate. Training qualified industrial robot operation and maintenance personnel requires relevant hardware and software facilities, and our vocational high schools and technical schools simply do not have enough resources. Finally, only a few state-owned enterprises have the ability to train relevant employees, which is a drop in the bucket.

Due to the scarcity, industrial robot operation and maintenance personnel are now in demand in the job market. A survey shows that the salary of industrial robot system operators is generally higher than the local average salary, and 45% of them can even earn twice the local average salary. Some relevant practitioners said that industrial robot system operation and maintenance personnel graduates are relatively few, and the talent demand gap is relatively large. After reaching a certain level, the monthly salary is very easy to exceed ten thousand.

It's never too late to mend

In recognizing the gradually expanding talent gap of industrial robots, the country has also launched a lot of measures to deal with it in a timely manner. On the one hand, it has issued documents to standardize professional standards, on the other hand, it has opened relevant majors in colleges and universities, and at the same time to promote the training of relevant talents.

In April 2019, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, together with the State Administration for Market Regulation and the National Bureau of Statistics, released 13 new occupations, the first to be released since the promulgation of the 2015 edition of the Occupational Classification of the People's Republic of China, including industrial robot system operator and industrial robot system operation and maintenance worker.

At the same time, the corresponding definitions of the two positions are also made, so that people have a more clear and accurate understanding:

Industrial robot system operator: a person who assembles, programs, debugs, changes process parameters, changes fixtures and other auxiliary operations for industrial robots, industrial robot workstations or systems, using human-computer interaction equipment such as teachers, operation panels and related mechanical tools.

Industrial robot system operator: a person who performs data collection, condition monitoring, fault analysis and diagnosis, repair and preventive maintenance of industrial robots, industrial robot workstations or systems using tools, measuring tools, testing instruments and equipment.

Recently, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security has once again publicized relevant new career information to the society, including robot engineering and technical personnel, which means to gradually solve the problem of talent shortage with the development of the robot industry.