This case study comes from the ABB Sustainability Report 2022.
In 2022, ABB expanded its global Robotics and Automation education program with several new training centers, including our €100 million global innovation and training campus in Austria. The new site, along with new regional training centers in the UK, Germany, Brazil, Sweden and Viet-nam, raises the number of ABB’s Robotics and Automation training facilities to more than 40 around the world. More than 30,000 students from high schools, colleges and universities, as wellas apprentices and staff, now participate in our training programs each year.
The sites complement the business area’s other instructional offerings, which include software suites and hardware, in the form of collaborative robot cells and application packages. Through more than 100 global partnerships with schools and universities, ABB works with educators to generate curriculum materials that will train young people and prepare them for the jobs of to-morrow.
The Robotics and Automation education program was developed to bridge a critical skills gap that has been identified by our research. In a 2022 survey of U.S. and European business leaders conducted by ABB, 74 percent of European and 70 percent of U.S. businesses said they planned to re- or nearshore operations to improve the resilience of their supply chains. The majority of these businesses view automation as a key to enabling these shifts and plan to invest in robotics and automation in the next three years.
Despite this growing appetite for automation, ABB’s 2022 global education survey found a significant shortfall in the education and training needed for the automated workplaces of the future. Only one in four educational institutions currently make any use of robots as part of their teaching programs.
For more information on our drive to prepare people for success in an age of robotics and automation, please visit the webpage ABB Robotics in Education.
