At a press conference at the Hanover Messe 2015 event, ABB (Zurich, Switzerland; www.abb.com) announced its latest acquisition to expand its technological leadership in collaborative robotics.
Germany’s Gomtec GmbH, based near Munich, brings with it 25 employees whose expertise, in particular with single-arm robots suited to working without a safety fence, will augment ABB’s engineering prowess and installed base of 250,000 robots worldwide.
This is another step in ABB’s Next Level strategy to accelerate sustainable value creation. This builds on ABB’s three focus areas of profitable growth, relentless execution and business-led collaboration.
ABB Chief executive officer Ulrich Spiesshofer said the rationale for buying Gomtec is clear. “Dramatically expanding applications for robots means that worldwide sales will skyrocket to multiples of today’s figures, about 150,000 robots annually. That’s as factories increasingly automate their manual-labor tasks, allowing them to redirect workers toward more value-added activities that offer better opportunities.”
“We stand at the threshold of an enormous expansion opportunity in robotics,” he said. “Not every robot that works outside of a cage must be a dual-arm robot. There are many applications where just one arm is enough. Gomtec has experience here. We also have experience with a certain payload with YuMi, while Gomtec has a different technology which has a larger payload. The fact is, Gomtec fits ABB like a glove.”