"Made in China" was for years the calling card of outsourced labor, but manufacturing is slowly coming back to the United States, and one Boston company wants to help drive its resurgence.
"Our long-term model for outsourcing labor is broken," Rodney Brooks, founder, chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics, said yesterday at the company's Fort Point headquarters.
"I see lots of innovation happening, but getting to manufacturing is difficult" for small companies, Brooks said. "I think there's a revolution coming in manufacturing."
Brooks and Rethink Robotics hope their American-made Baxter robot, a two-armed, humanoid machine that even gets a confused look on its "face" when it needs something, can help do just that.
"There's a fair amount of pride people take in American manufacturing," said Rethink Robotics CEO Scott Eckert. "There's a growing understanding of the importance of manufacturing in the economy."
Brian Gilmore, executive vice president at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said more local manufacturing has and will continue to connect two of the state's key industries, tech and manufacturing.
"Obviously any kind of manufacturing taking place here is a good thing," he said. "We have the skilled workforce that not only can design these machines but build them."
One of Baxter's strengths is its ease of use — Rethink Robotics said someone with a high school education can train it — and its versatility.
Designed to work alongside humans, Baxter excels at automating the most mundane manufacturing tasks, such as sorting, picking up and placing, and inserting, the company said. Though they are vital to factories, automating those jobs allows employees who work next to Baxter to concentrate on higher functioning — and higher paying — jobs. Rethink Robotics said Baxter is designed to work with people, instead of replacing them.
Small companies that are innovating often are forced to scale up quickly to meet increasing demand, Brooks said, and Baxter is a cost-efficient way to automate production.
There's a growing movement to boost U.S. manufacturing with giants such as Apple and Google marketing new products that are made here. Wal-Mart this week hosted a two-day summit with the specific goal of bringing more manufacturing back to the United States.
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