Our View: Automation filling a dire need in rubber manufacturing

Automation long has had a role in the tire and rubber product manufacturing industry.

But that role and the need for it are changing, making the process more of a necessity and less a luxury upgrade. And the changes are coming more now in molded goods production and not just in tire manufacturing facilities.

Years back, it was seen strictly as a competitiveness issue. Labor costs, from tires to engineered rubber products, made manufacturing in the U.S. a losing prospect in many cases. That led to the flood of production moving to low-wage countries, where labor-intensive production found a lucrative cost advantage.

Automation, in turn, became a way to combat that. Collaboration between machinery makers and automation experts worked to close that gap, to varying degrees of success.

Over the years, a variety of other initiatives and movements worked to try to revitalize domestic manufacturing in the U.S.

"Re-shoring" came first as a buzzword that created more sound bites for the media than actual jobs in domestic manufacturing factories. But over time, the work of organizations pushing the effort started to make headway and notched wins that brought a steady return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S.

Another movement that has proven effective in many tire and rubber sectors is the trend for manufacturers to be "in the market, for the market." With rising transportation costs and the permeation of supply chain issues that can bring the movement of products to a halt, being close to customers makes sense from a logistical and cost standpoint.

That, along with the growing use of automation across much of the tire manufacturing process, helped make investment in new tire plants in the U.S. and North America a viable option again, after years of inactivity.

Now it's time for automation to bring relief to those making non-tire rubber products, for a bit of a different reason: the difficulty in finding qualified workers to fill positions on the shop floor.

Several machinery companies in the rubber sector say they are doing their best to automate processes for their customers, both to cut down on the number of operators needed, with the added benefit of making a higher quality product.

Desma said its machine offerings bring greater automation options, and allow customers to better control their destiny, in terms of a difficult labor market along with improved quality.

Engel's automation innovations include integrated robots, digital assistance and other bells and whistles that can give customers a tool to combat labor shortages and rising energy costs. Advantages range from streamlined production and error reduction, to quick access to crucial production data.

And Maplan sees its investment in automation as a way to fulfill the need for molding experts to give their customers help on the manufacturing side of the business.

Add it all together, and automation as a tool continues to evolve and provide answers to a number of difficult problems.