FORT SMITH — Inside the numerous manufacturing plants across Fort Smith, bright yellow and orange robots are hard at work, doing mundane and sometimes dangerous tasks that their human counterparts no longer want to do.
“This is definitely the wave of the future,” said Gary Anderson, a University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor in the department of system engineering.
In the past 10-15 years, manufacturing companies have slowly ramped up their automation capabilities. Advances in technology have completely shifted the face of manufacturing, said Paul Harvel, the president and chief executive officer of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce.
The robotics and automation have also changed the lives of the human workers. Chris Hoyle, the Fort Smith plant manager of Baldor Electric Co., said that when the facility first started to accumulate its robots, some employees came to him with concern that the robots would take their jobs.
But, Hoyle said, the company, which employs 1,150 at the Fort Smith plant where electric motors and other devices are made, has a no-layoff policy.
“Nobody loses their job, nobody gets laid off,” he said. “We just move people to somewhere else.”
The workers end up benefiting, because the robots take over some of the most repetitive and dangerous jobs — a fact that has contributed to the Baldor plant’s 5 million consecutive hours without a workplace accident, Hoyle said.
And productivity skyrockets when robots are involved, he said. At Baldor, humans can produce 180 units per shift, compared with robots’ production of 300 units per shift.
Ronnie Adkinson, the human resources director of the Cloyes Gear & Products plant in Subiaco, said robots remove human variation from the products. Cloyes, a member of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, produces parts used in automobiles.
But robots and automation are expensive: Adkinson said robots cost an average of $55,000, and other forms of automation can cost about $100,000.
Cloyes has about 75 robots and 485 employees at the plant in Logan County.
The robots work in unskilled positions. Adkinson said without the robots, the company would hire 50-70 more people, but the jobs would be for unskilled labor and thus low-paying.
Now, the people who oversee the robots at Cloyes must be skilled enough to manage and control the robots, he said. Robot technicians start at $11.65 an hour and can work up to $14 an hour. The starting salary for unskilled workers at the plant is $10.65 an hour.
And even with robots, the Subiaco plant has hired 60 people within the past year and is actively looking for 25 more.
Robots “save jobs. If we didn’t have robotics, I’m not sure where we’d be,” Adkinson said. “If we can’t be cost-effective, we can’t get business.”
Harvel said advancement in technology is beneficial to the job market.
“When they’re adding the technology, they’re not decreasing the employment. But they’re not increasing the employment as large as you would have seen 25 years ago with that kind of investment,” he said.
Still, “if you have increased production, then you have a lot more jobs out in the service industry. So overall, your jobs are going up,” Harvel said.
Fort Smith’s unemployment rate was 7.6 percent in May, the latest numbers available. In May, Arkansas had a 7.3 percent unemployment rate.
Fort Smith lost its Whirlpool Corp. plant last month, which eliminated 1,000 company jobs and another 1,000 jobs at related area businesses. But one-third of those laid off by Whirlpool have already found new jobs, Harvel said. The loss hurt the region, but he said the area’s focus on technology makes that type of mass layoff rare.
“We also kept a whole lot of companies because of the technology investment. They are even better committed to your area,” Harvel said, citing Gerber’s investment of $120 million for its baby-food plant in Fort Smith. “[It] means they’re going to be here a long time.”
To keep that sort of company loyalty in the region, Fort Smith invested $190 million in robotics and mechanization last year, Harvel said.
The area has several hightech manufacturing plants and warehouses, including Gerber, Planter’s Inc., Hiram Walker and Mars PetCare.
Because of the manufacturing in the region, the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith offers robotics and engineering classes to train potential employees.
John McFarland, the former chief executive officer of Baldor until its acquisition by Swiss competitor ABB Ltd. last year, said ABB paid for its employees to attend robotics training courses at UAFS. And some of the former Whirlpool employees went back to UAFS to update their skill sets, Harvel said.
Michael Reynolds, UAFS’ engineering department head, said the school blends engineering and electronics to teach students how to control and manipulate automation. Most schools, he said, don’t offer opportunities for students to work with hardware and don’t teach both sides of automation.
“That’s what bridges that gap,” he said. “That’s what will make us successful.”
UAFS Chancellor Paul Beran said the university gives students an edge in the manufacturing industry with additional training in animation. Aside from cartoons, animation can be used to simulate robotics and automation, he said. Some of the students have even found internships making animation videos for local manufacturing companies.
“Manufacturing’s healthy in this country — a lot healthier than people perceive,” McFarland said.
And experts say Arkansas has a large amount of advanced technology.
“My personal opinion is that Arkansas is right up there with the best places,” Anderson of UALR said, citing the sophistication of companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Dillard’s Inc.
Dillard’s opened a distribution center for Internet orders in Maumelle earlier this spring. The center uses semiautonomous robots that retrieve materials from across the warehouse.
Meanwhile, companies are continuing to invest more in robots and expand. Hoyle said Baldor’s Fort Smith plant has two more robots on order.
Anderson, whose area of expertise is in autonomous robots for space operations but is familiar with robotics used for manufacturing purposes, said robotics is continuing to evolve and will add more intelligence to manufacturing.
Baldor will continue to look for new ways to shift responsibilities to robots, Hoyle said: “We’re even researching to see if we can use robots to paint our motors.”
Business, Pages 65 on 07/29/2012