The new look, redesigned Service Dealer magazine is now bi-monthly and includes a host of new and familiar features.
Jan / Feb 2014 issue contains:
2014 STATE OF THE INDUSTRY REPORT HERITAGE AWARDS PROFILE OF DAVID WITHERS LIVES REMEMBERED BTME PREVIEW LAMMA PREVIEW DIARY OF A SEASON + 2014 EVENT PLANNER
BANGING OUR DRUM . . . Robotics to grow twenty-fold by 2020
It might be unfortunate terminology at this time, but to say the tide is turning when applied to the future of the land-based engineering sector, may well prove to be wholly appropriate.
For many years, indeed from the start of the industrial revolution, we have relied on recruiting from within. Our technicians, nee mechanics, nee fitters came either from a family connection, or from the farming community, or from those who loved tinkering around with engines.
And they have sustained us magnificently.
But as society changed from the 1960s, the career options for school leavers were slanted towards the more glamorous and well-paid occupations. Retail, banking, fashion, media and more recently consumer technology. We hardly got a look in. Working on tractors, combines, lawnmowers? You’ve got to be joking - or desperate!
In recent years however, the game has changed. Our products now contain as much technological wizardry as a high performance car, aircraft or boat.
We have responded by training up our staff, by using new tools and diagnostics and by moving way beyond the engineering parameters of 20 or 30 years ago.
But that is still not going to be enough, we are going to need to attract a new breed of innovative and skilled people to sustain and grow our industry in the coming years - and they are almost certainly going to have to be attracted from outside. People who hitherto might not have given our industry a second glance.
A report out this week says that the market for robotics in agriculture is currently worth £50m, but that it is expected to rise twenty-fold by 2020 to around £10bn.
And interestingly, the report’s authors, Dublin-based Research and Markets say, "The key to farm robots is keeping costs down. Adapting existing commercial vehicles instead of building new ones is the best way to build viable agricultural robots."
Robotics will start to impact across the whole of our sector, from the farm to the golf course, to the garden.
And those advances will require a whole new approach and challenges to find the engineers and technicians of the future to design, build and look after machines that only a few years ago lived in the fertile mind of Arthur C Clarke and his contempories.
