I am thrilled to welcome Joe Campbell to A3 #therobotindustrypodcast.

Universal Robots is celebrating a lot of firsts this year. UR has just celebrated it's 15th year in business and its sale of it's 50,000th robot to a customer in Germany.

What Joe is very excited about is helping SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) transform their business and include automation into their operations that will quickly impact their productivity and profitability all around the world.

We talk about Universal Robots line of cobots, the innovative UR+ store, Application Kits, and some of their partners: Robotiq, Vectis, and a product called ActiNav that is changing the game for bin picking automation.

Labor (or lack thereof) is one of the recurring themes when we talk about robots and Universal Robots. Manufacturing is struggling to attract and keep skilled trades in the plant and COVID-19 has made this even harder as baby boomers retire at an alarming rate.

We talk about education, robotics as a tool, social distancing, the dirty, dangerous, and boring part of manufacturing as well as flexibility in high mix and medium to low volume manufacturing. We also talk about reshoring and supply chain in the COVID era.

Themes in the conversation also include:

UR's community of customers who share robotic best practices online

Online Learning with the UR Academy (over 100K students and counting)!

SMEs attracting new employees with automation and robotics

Putting robots into education market and developing curriculum

Universal Robots continue to be the leader in the cobot space. They have competition, but they keep innovating ahead of the market.

If you would like to find out more about Universal Robots you can check them out at https://www.universal-robots.com/ and if you would like to chat with Joe Campbell, he is on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jecampbell/

Our sponsor for this episode is Ehrhardt Automation Systems. Ehrhardt builds and commissions turnkey solutions for worldwide clients. With over 80 years of precision manufacturing experience, they understand the complex world of automated manufacturing, project management, supply chain management, and delivering world-class custom automation on-time and on-budget. Contact one of their sales engineers to see what Ehrhardt can build for you [email protected]

Enjoy the podcast,

Jim