Job Opportunities Linked to Robotics?

Dow Chemical has embraced robotics and automation in manufacturing new solar panel roof shingles, and the company now employs people who lost their jobs when the automotive sector downsized.

Jobs in Michigan are as hard to come by as anywhere in the U.S., but people with engineering degrees and those with an aptitude for high tech are finding that where robots go, jobs follow. CBS Reports picked up on this recently in a story about Dow Chemical (Midland, MI) where people are finding work thanks to new opportunities driven by automation.

Dow has embraced robotics and automation in the making of new solar panel roof shingles, and the company now employs people who lost their jobs when the automotive sector downsized. That is part of the story depicted in a May CBS report, “Dow Chemical’s solar-powered jobs plan.”

JR Automation (Holland, MI), installed some of the robot work cells seen in the news footage. “Trends in green and renewable energy have spurred new applications for robots because large volumes of products like solar panels need to be produced with automation to be cost effective,” said Scot Lindemann, the vice president of JR Automation. “Robots can handle delicate, expensive parts like solar arrays with speed and precision in a way that just can’t be done cost-effectively by hand.”

The appeal of robotics is well known within academia. It is the inspiration for the FIRST Robotics Competition, with a reach of more than 50,000 K-9 students. Across the country, colleges and universities with robotics programs are churning out students with great job prospects. For example, JR Automation has already hired three graduates from Lake Superior State University this year and now employs 14 LSSU graduates. Applied Manufacturing Technologies (Orion, MI) is another automation supplier with 16 LSSU graduates working in robotics.

“There were more than 60 job offers for the 15 engineering and engineering technology students graduating with the robotics option this year,” reports Jim Devaprasad, a professor in the College of Engineering, Technology and Economic Development at Lake Superior State University. Located in Sault Ste. Marie, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this college is producing students with job prospects in a state that has recently added more manufacturing jobs than any other, according to the CBS report.

“An engineering degree with a robotics option from LSSU makes you particularly well prepared for the automated manufacturing industry,” added Devaprasad. He explained that the robotics option focuses on systems integration, “which allows students to hit the ground running because they already are trained in real-world technologies.”

www.robotics.org