Robots are alive and well.
Sure, General Motors Corp. took some flack for its Super Bowl commercial about a lovable, depressed robot laid off from its auto making job. The robot, unable to cut it in fast-food and other jobs, dreams of plunging from a bridge.
But demand for robots is driving Motoman Inc., an Irvine unit of Japan’s Yaskawa Electric Corp. The company makes industrial automation gear for medical laboratories and manufacturers.
The Irvine unit has doubled sales in the past five years to $25 million, according to Frank Bibas, general manager of Motoman in Irvine.
The company recently signed a $1.1 million renewal of its lease for 22,500 square feet of space on Kaiser Avenue, near MacArthur Boulevard and Red Hill Avenue. Motoman more than tripled its space when it moved to Irvine from Cypress five years ago.
Michael Hartel of Colliers International’s Irvine office represented Motoman in the lease. Jeff Hirsch of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services Inc. represented landlord CNH LLC.
Motoman, which has its headquarters in West Carrollton, Ohio, bills itself as the second-largest robotics maker in the country. Its biggest competitor is Britain’s Olympus Technologies Ltd., which specializes in robotics and welding machines.
Yaskawa Electric, which also has operations in Europe and Asia, does $3 billion in yearly sales.
The Irvine operation handles engineering, installation and service of robots,primarily robotic arms used by manufacturers and medical labs,from here to the Mississippi River.
The local unit focuses on a product called RobotWorld.
The machine “really doesn’t look like a robot at all,” Bibas said.
It’s a 5-inch by 5-inch square that hovers above a belt, suspended like a puck on an air hockey table.
It’s used by medical labs to sort patients’ blood samples. The robot reads barcodes on tubes of blood and decides where they go.
Some are sent for tests. Others have some blood siphoned off to make a duplicate sample. Some are dropped into a centrifuge.
Last year, Motoman landed a $7 million order from Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente. Another big customer is Valencia-based Specialty Laboratories Inc.
The RobotWorld device also is used for electromechanical tasks, such as the assembly of inkjet printers.
Motoman has about 25 local workers. Jobs range from electrical and mechanical engineering to sales.
The company’s Irvine site provides robots for customers with operations as far away as Singapore, Ireland and Puerto Rico. A lot of the company’s U.S. business comes from Midwestern heavy industry, including makers of farm tools and dairies that ship tons of products a week.
Robots help automate tasks on assembly lines. Manufacturers use them for welding metal parts, lifting heavy items and loading products onto palettes for shipping.
The devices often do jobs that aren’t safe for people to do over and over. They help keep workers’ compensation insurance costs down for employers by lowering some risks.
“There are some motions that people shouldn’t do, like lifting a heavy palette,” Bibas said. “Robots often take the job that’s undesirable.”
One of Motoman’s customers uses robots to load butter onto palettes in uncomfortably cold conditions, Bibas said.
GM’s commercial aside, manufacturers are out to automate production to be more competitive. For starters, robots increase accuracy and quality control.
“Automation doesn’t only make a cheaper product, it gives you more consistency and greater predictability,” Bibas said. “And the robot is always going to show up in the morning.”
Robots also work around the clock.
Bibas, 49, has been in robotics since the 1980s. He said he saw a lot of initial resistance to automation as people feared robots would replace manufacturing workers.
“That was a big battle over the last 20 years,” Bibas said. “People were quite threatened by it.”
Often, robots end up pushing workers up the production line, according to Bibas.
“Perhaps the robot does take someone’s job. But that guy ends up running the robot,” he said.
Motoman gets a lot of business from companies that traditionally required machinists for welding, he said.
A shortage of welders has made it expensive. The few workers that are out there chase the highest wages, Bibas said.
In some cases, it makes sense for a small welding operation to move production to China, according to Bibas. But for a company that welds huge pieces of metal, it’s too costly to ship from China, he said.
Motoman’s robots are built around particular tasks. They can be finely tooled to pick up about a gram of powdered medicine, or big enough to move 2-ton truck frames.
The size of an order runs from $200,000 to multiple millions, Bibas said.
Motoman designs and builds all of the equipment needed to integrate a robot into the factory floor. Technicians program the robots through software that controls operations.
“Not only do you tell it where to go in space, you have to tell it what to do when it gets there,” Bibas said. “There’s a sequence of logic.”
The company also teaches employees how to run robots and provides long-term support.
Motoman makes robots flexible so they can be programmed to do multiple tasks and fitted with “grips” and handling tools.
The company expects more growth.
“We want to increase our presence on the West Coast,” Bibas said.
Motoman is looking to expand with new, smarter robots that can do different things, he said.
