Hartford Business Journal

24 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | OCTOBER 14, 2024 FOCUS | MANUFACTURING Nasir Mannan is the principal engineer at the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology in East Hartford, which demonstrates robots and other automation technologies for manufacturers. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Rise Of The Bots For CT manufacturers, robots, automation technology seen as crucial to addressing labor shortage some of the creativity he sees among small and medium-size players as well. "At Sargent Manufacturing (in New Haven), which is part of Assa Abloy, they actually have cobots working with punch presses that were made in the 50s and 60s," Lavoie said. "So, they've taken very old technology and adapted robotics to move the parts along the cycle of operations. All you have to do is have a worker to load raw material and then take the finished product off." That sounds like a recipe for a declining human workforce, one of the biggest concerns that particularly labor unions have with automation. But Lavoie once again stresses that these are often jobs that compa- nies were having difficulty filling to begin with. He's also bullish on his vision of robots allowing for upskilling of their human colleagues. "These jobs that we're automating, we're moving people from lower- paying jobs into higher-paying jobs," he said, citing companies that have lowered their headcount but actu- ally raised their total payroll. "And so, from a tax-dollar perspective, there's actually more money coming into Connecticut, but there's fewer jobs there." And the state also offers help with the switch to automation through its Manufacturing Innovation Fund, which can provide companies with up to $100,000 in non-dilutive grant funding for the purchase of equipment. Lavoie has called on state lawmakers to replenish the depleting fund with at least $100 million over the next six years. Overall, automation adoption is By Harriet Jones hjones@hartfordbusiness.com W hen Jeffrey Davis took the reins at New London's historic Sheffield Pharma- ceuticals in 2016, he knew there was one big problem he needed to solve. "Our production lines were still very manually run with a lot of people," Davis said in a recent interview. "Quickly, I saw the writing on the wall that it was getting harder to hire people — fewer people wanted to do those sorts of jobs." The solution: Automation, facilitated by robotics on the assembly line. Sheffield Pharma is a small, legacy manufacturing company of the sort that dot Connecticut and provide a huge chunk of the state's employ- ment and economic output. Back in its first heyday as Dr. Sheffield's, its claim to fame was as the first company to invent toothpaste, and then sell it in a tube. While its original brand is still available, the bulk of its business now comes from its role as a contract manufacturer of various products for some of the biggest names in the U.S. "Walmart, Target, CVS, Walgreens, Publix, Kroger — we do private label for all these companies," Davis said. And that lack of a uniform product — the need for flexibility — drove his quest for the perfect packaging line. "While we mostly make things in tubes and bottles, those can get packaged in a bunch of different ways, a bunch of different sizes," Davis explained. "Which is why a lot of our equipment does employ robotic arms because they can be more flexible than a giant machine built to do one thing." Robotics is a maturing discipline. It's been around for many decades — the first robotic arm was installed on a factory floor in the 1950s — but like many other technologies, the pace of change has only increased in recent years. That includes the rise of collab- orative robots — or cobots — that can work alongside and physically collaborate with humans. And in Connecticut, the use of robotics and other automation technologies has taken on increased importance within the manufacturing industry as a way to address the ongoing labor shortage. In fact, robotics is a key part of the state's manufacturing strategic plan, Make It Here 2030, which was released in April. It calls on the state to develop a "well-defined and well-funded plan to drive industrial automation across the manufacturing industrial base." "It really is driven around the premise that we're never going to have enough people to get the work done that needs to be done," Paul Lavoie, Connecticut's chief manu- facturing officer, said of the strategic plan. "We have a workforce shortage in Connecticut. We've realized that we're never going to hire our way out of the problem." That means encouraging and even funding automation built around robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies, as a way to help companies grow. "I tell every manufacturer, you need two plans on your desk. You need a retention and recruitment plan, but you also need an industrial automa- tion plan," Lavoie said. Streamline operations The big names, like Sikorsky and Pratt & Whitney, have been in this game for many years, progressively integrating robotics into their produc- tion lines and maintenance operations, and are now even offering customized robotic solutions to clients. But Lavoie says he's encouraged by Jeffrey Davis

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