Can Atlantic Canada’s Labour Shortage be Solved by Robotics?
Written by Nathan Field, Enginuity’s Robotics and Automation Manager
Atlantic Canada is facing a labour shortage issue that is not altogether unique in North America, but has been exacerbated due many smaller, often distinct but accumulating reasons.
What can a company do when they are losing employees and do not have anyone to fill the gap?
They could find people, or as will be explored in this whitepaper, automate the tasks they were doing.
Businesses are prioritizing Robotics and Automation in 2022
Each month we talk to business and industry leaders who are looking to solve some of the key problems they are facing by implementing some degree or form of a robotics and automation solution. The possibilities that we can achieve through these technologies are practically endless, we often find multiple potential positive ROI applications during our first discovery call.
From our perspective, we’re seeing challenges that span from costly inefficiencies, labour shortages, to correcting human error. Robotics and automation have the potential to solve so many problems for companies and with each passing year the technology becomes more accessible to growing companies.
What industries are solving problems with automation?
Every industry will move towards some form of automation, big or small over the next 5 years. While the challenges these industries face are all different, many of the problems stem from the fact that labour is expensive and is often unreliable, especially as economic conditions change. Here are some of the industries and recent examples that Enginuity has been a part of.
The Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical industry is already relying on robotics and automation for a range of solutions from development and manufacturing to testing and analysis.
Unbound Chemical is a startup that tasked Enginuity with finding a solution to the labour-intensive practice of having to sort expired or unused pills from pharmacies. Enginuity developed a custom solution using machine vision and robotics to sort batches of pills into the proper categories. If you’d like to read more, check out this case study.
“The best part about working with Enginuity was that they understood exactly where I was coming from as a startup entrepreneur and provided what we needed in just 6 weeks. Everyone was blown away by the speed and accuracy. [Since] we make decisions based on information, we got that information faster than we anticipated, which means that we can go faster.
That’s it. That’s business, that’s start up, that’s innovation.“
The Food Processing Industry
Robotics in the Food Processing world is not a new concept. With manufacturing converging into the digital world and components becoming more readily available, the advances of industry 4.0 are making robotics and automation more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses in this sector. Money that was being spent on assembly workers is now being spent elsewhere since industry 4.0 systems are faster, require little to no labour, and can work around the clock.
For IMO Foods in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, a fairly remote rural community, they’ve been able to increase production and lighten the burden of finding labourers as we go through a labour shortage in Atlantic Canada.
Robotics and automation technologies are changing business.
While these technologies are not new, the adoption rate across industries is increasing year over year. Demonstrating a positive ROI, showcasing practical and economical applications for businesses and increasing awareness surrounding robotics and automation are going to make impactful changes in the business world.
Read more about some of the benefits of robotics and automation, more practical applications, and some of the preliminary aspects of adopting these technologies in our white paper. It could save your business more than you know!
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What’s inside
Benefits of Automation
How can this help you?
Return on Investment (ROIs)
Health Check
Are you primed for a process improvement assessment?
Cobots
Collaborative Robots
Machine Vision
AGVs and Material Movement
Automated Guided Vehicles
The Challenge
Atlantic Canada is facing a labour shortage issue that is not altogether unique in North America, but has been exasperated due many smaller, often distinct but accumulating reasons. In fact, in 2018 labour shortage study by the Business Development Bank of Canada stated:
50% of Atlantic Canadian businesses report difficulty in hiring employees during the last year (highest in the country) – An Exploration of Skills and Labour Shortages, ACOA, June 2019
The statement above naturally poses a question as to why, let us explore this in more detail. To allow for a slightly more detailed and pointed analysis we will focus on Nova Scotia as it displays – with greater contrast – the issues commonly present in Atlantic
Canada.
Although Halifax is a relatively densely populated city with 1077 people per square km and is Canadas 13th largest metropolitan area , there are many small rural townships.
In fact, over half of the people living in Nova Scotia do not live in Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM). Furthermore, although Halifax is seeing growth not seen since the 1970’s, rural Nova Scotia is suffering.
About the author
Nathan Field leads the Automation and Robotics team at Enginuity Inc. He has a passion for what he does and truly enjoys automation, robotics, and industry 4.0 technologies.
Graduating in Ontario in 2017 with an associate degree in electrical engineering technology (automation stream), he quickly became an electrical and controls designer for a company out of Ontario, working on large projects for some very well-known clients.
Since moving to Nova Scotia in late 2019 Nathan has worked for Enginuity Inc., bringing their automation and robotics division to life.
Nathan has seen the potential of automation while working in Ontario, and he hopes to help develop it here in Atlantic Canada. He hopes to skip the many years classic factories took to incrementally upgrade their automated systems and bring Industry 4.0 capability to current projects. This will help ensure scalability and optimal functionality – and can allow companies to remain competitive on the worlds stage
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