Planning for Nation Wide Dissemination of Robotics to SMEs

Abstract

This paper describes how a special assignment from the Swedish government was carried out to support small and medium sized enterprises in implementing automation and robotics. The focus of this paper is to investigate i) how insights and knowledge has been transferred and ii) how the ability of integrators and advisors has been increased. Within the project Pilot project automation challenge in the robot leap (PILAR), 84 pre-studies and 40 in-depth studies were carried out. In PILAR a methodology was developed, and a way of working was tested where coaches in four regionally defined nodes in Sweden visited companies and had advisor support through telephone and video. The project results indicate that insights and knowledge had been increased in several companies and that integrators and advisors have increased their ability to stimulate automation solutions. In addition, eight recommendations on how to successfully perform a nationwide dissemination of robotics is presented.