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There is a measure of irony in the robot industry's plight. Although industrial robots account for only 2% of the $24 billion factory-automation business (such items as computers and other electronically controlled industrial machinery make up much of the rest), the mechanical menials have drastically altered many sectors of the American workplace. Robots perform more than 98% of the spot welding on Ford's highly successful Taurus and Sable cars. At Doehler-Jarvis, a major Ohio metal fabricator, robots load and unload die-casting machines, trim parts and ladle molten metal. At IBM factories across the country, robots insert disk drives into personal computers and snap keys onto electronic typewriter keyboards. At a General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth, one robot drills 550 holes in the vertical tail fins of an F-16 fighter in three hours. It used to take three workers eight hours to do the same job.
What led to the current U.S. debacle? One factor was a slowing in capital spending that began with last year's elimination of the investment tax credit, making it more expensive for companies to buy big-ticket items like robots. Beyond that, the technology was often overhyped. Robots also proved more expensive to operate than many manufacturers imagined. U.S. robotmakers depended heavily on the fortunes of a single industry: automaking. U.S. auto manufacturers have bought 50% of American robots in current use. By contrast, less than 10% of Japan's robots are operated by its auto firms.
As the domestic automakers' share of the American market has declined, so has the need for robots. GM alone accounts for 40% of U.S. demand for the devices; last year, when the No. 1 automaker killed a major program intended to build plastic-bodied cars, it canceled about $100 million in orders for robots and support equipment. That was bad news for GMF Robotics of Troy, Mich., the nation's biggest robotmaker (1986 sales: $186 million). GMF, a joint venture of GM and Fanuc, Japan's largest robotics firm, has cut its work force to 400 people, 60% of what it was two years ago.
Another area of vulnerability for U.S. manufacturers was the hydraulic- robot technology pioneered by Unimation. The company's robots, which became the American industry standard, were large (up to 4,000 lbs.), powerful, multipurpose and expensive, ranging in price from $30,000 to $200,000 apiece. But these bulky hydraulic machines, originally programmed to perform tasks by means of magnetic tape similar to that used in tape recorders, were often inaccurate and susceptible to breakdowns. Says Raj Reddy, director of the Robotics Institute at Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon University: "U.S. companies dragged their feet on innovation because they wanted to squeeze every last penny out of their existing equipment." Despite those drawbacks, in the early 1980s hydraulic robots appeared to be the best workhorses available for such automated tasks as parts assembly, materials handling and heavy-duty lifting.