Automation refers back to the utilization of know-how to complete duties and processes with minimal human intervention. The time interval encompasses a wide range of utilized sciences from robotic palletizing cells to AI product administration devices. Automation is transforming industries and there are nice benefits to automating elements of your company.
The case for automation is getting stronger yearly. Whereas 10 years prior to now, we had been nonetheless introducing companies to the important benefits of automating even one course of, now people sometimes come to us already determining that they want to automate. And they also want to do it shortly and successfully.
There are quite a few benefits to together with automation, considerably with robotics. Whereas loads of discussions give consideration to the “simple benefits” of automation — like elevated effectivity, productiveness, and effectivity — there are many further nuanced benefits to automation.
In the event you want your company to thrive this 12 months, it’s needed to understand the exact benefits that are most crucial correct now. It’s also essential to know what it’s greatest to steer clear of when automating, to flee widespread pitfalls.
Let’s uncover 9 of the very best benefits of automation in 2025.
9 Benefits of Automation in 2025 (and What to Avoid)
1. Flexibility and agility
With robotic automation, we often focus on flexibility and agility. These are every benefits that embody automation nonetheless one is increasingly more further associated in 2025…
Versatile automation refers to strategies that will meet deliberate modifications to exercise or product requires. For example, your group could experience seasonal manufacturing spikes. A flexible automation course of can adapt to these predictable modifications.
As Robotiq R&D Enterprise Supervisor, Nicolas Lauzier highlights, this agility and associated smart know-how could give your group a aggressive edge:
“There could also be an urgency for adopting automated choices inside the current monetary native climate. In keeping with opinions, smart manufacturing facility choices can be the foremost drivers of competitiveness inside the subsequent 5 years.”
A pitfall to steer clear of proper right here is investing too intently in rigid automation choices. These are typically designed for mass manufacturing and will fall fast in within the current day’s fast-evolving markets.
2. Scale merely and adapt to change
A standout advantage of automation is scalability. Not solely can the right automation help you to ramp up manufacturing to fulfill your strategic progress targets, agile automation can also help you to pivot manufacturing to take care of stunning market shifts.
In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, we seen that many companies that succeeded in adapting to the altering world situation had invested within the right automation sooner than the pandemic.
One approach that could be very helpful is to deploy “copy-paste” robotic cells. This entails deploying a selected utility as quickly as after which replicating that exact same cell to scale manufacturing.
An occasion of copy-paste automation is in decentralized palletizing. This modular technique entails together with a palletizing cell to the highest of each new manufacturing line. By incorporating this core end-of-line course of into the highway itself, you steer clear of needing a drastic reconfiguration of your facility every time you scale manufacturing.
A pitfall to steer clear of proper right here is assuming that what the market will want eventually or relying an extreme quantity of on predictions. In its place, put cash into automation that may allow you to adapt to modifications shortly as soon as they happen.
3. Scale manufacturing domestically
Native manufacturing, empowered by collaborative robotic automation, is increasingly more thought-about a strategic choice for producers.
For a couple of years, offshoring manufacturing was seen as the best way during which to scale manufacturing. However, in latest occasions, reshoring production has grow to be widespread. This shift isn’t only a growth nonetheless is turning into a necessity inside the rapidly altering monetary and geopolitical panorama.
By bringing manufacturing nearer to residence, producers can experience many benefits, along with decreased supply costs, shorter lead events, and the ability to customize merchandise for native markets.
Reshoring with robotic automation moreover builds resilience into a company’s operations by reducing reliance on difficult worldwide present modifications.
A pitfall to steer clear of with reshoring is to verify solely the preliminary costs fairly than calculating the return on funding of automation in the long term. Offshored operations sometimes rely upon low-cost labor, which can make automated choices look further costly at first. However, monetary financial savings sometimes grow to be clear everytime you problem into the medium to long term.
4. Make increased selections with information
Automation wouldn’t merely perform key duties in your company, it moreover generates invaluable information. This information can feed into your wider enterprise analytics and help you to make increased, further strategic selections.
Throughout the fashionable world, information is necessary for making good enterprise selections. With a robotic system, for example, you’ll have the ability to generate information that allows you to maintain optimizing your robotic deployment and improve effectivity.
Our eBook Analytics for Cobots highlights how collaborative robots can simplify capturing this necessary information. By monitoring solely the right metrics, you’ll have the ability to give consideration to individuals who straight align alongside together with your operational needs for the automated reply.
Amassing this information can also help you to justify your earlier selections, equal to investing in automation inside the first place. For example, the data you accumulate from a collaborative robotic can help you calculate the ROI and make selections about future automation initiatives.
A pitfall to steer clear of proper right here is monitoring pointless information. Solely monitor and analyze information that’s associated to your needs and utility.
5. Solves workforce shortages
Labor shortage is a rising drawback in fashionable manufacturing and is a matter now we have now been monitoring for plenty of years. With an rising older workforce and fewer knowledgeable employees in key jobs (equal to end of line palletizing), automation is increasingly more the one alternative for some companies.
Robotiq’s Nicholas Lauzier emphasizes the urgency of this instance in 2024, stating:
“Analysis current that the labor shortage producers at current face simply isn’t extra prone to diminish; the reality is, it’s anticipated to worsen. As people retire, youthful employees increasingly more go for jobs with increased working conditions and compensation, steering clear of manufacturing positions.”
Automation offers a strategic response to this drawback, enabling you to maximise the potential of your current teams. By allowing automated strategies to take over the additional repetitive, mundane duties, you liberate your knowledgeable professionals for higher-value, further intellectually stimulating actions.
A pitfall to steer clear of simply isn’t talking the labor shortages to teams sooner than together with automation. When people understand why you’re together with this new know-how, they’ll further merely get on board.
6. Assemble safer, increased workplaces
Most likely probably the most understated benefits of automation is its capability to create increased workplaces. By addressing the “4 D’s of robotics” you are taking away the least attention-grabbing options of people’s jobs.
These 4 D’s discuss with duties that are boring, dangerous, dirty, or dear. They’re usually jobs that end in low morale, bigger accident prices, lower job prime quality, and elevated operational costs. By automating them, you’ll have the ability to take away the burden on human employees and make their jobs further rewarding.
Robots sometimes excel on the duties that folks don’t take pleasure in doing. For example, a boring job is maybe a repetitive assembly exercise. When human employees do the similar exercise for hours on end, they’ll grow to be demotivated, and the obligation prime quality is decreased. Nevertheless a robotic will merely and persistently perform the similar exercise for hours on end.
A pitfall to steer clear of proper right here simply isn’t involving your workforce members inside the deployment. In the event you comprise people from the start, they sometimes take possession of the robotic deployment, essential to raised outcomes.
7. Cut back waste and improve sustainability
Sustainability has grow to be a central focus all through many industries. As many companies look to align their operations with further sustainable practices, automation can current a strong instrument to info this transformation.
Robotic automation, for example, has been confirmed to make packaging processes further sustainable. Packaging might be a notoriously wasteful manufacturing stage, every in provides and vitality utilization. With the right automation reply, you’ll have the ability to type out this downside and contribute to enhancing your group’s basic sustainability.
By together with collaborative robotic packaging, you’ll have the ability to optimize your workflow and decrease supplies use to a minimal. For example, by monitoring your robotic, you’ll have the ability to tweak and regulate the amount of material utilized in packaging to cut it to a minimal. This isn’t a one-off train nonetheless fairly a step it’s greatest to revisit on occasion to see how one can further reduce waste.
A pitfall to steer clear of at this stage is your automated processes in isolation. Usually, you’ll have the ability to reduce waste significantly all through robotic deployment by noticing completely different inefficiencies within the the rest of your operations.
8. Assure fixed operations
Whereas robotic automation is normally most celebrated for enhancing effectivity and productiveness, possibly its most transformational revenue is consistency.
Not like information processes, automation could be very fixed. That’s important in enterprise processes as a result of it ensures your group is reliable and maintains a extreme stage of product prime quality. Together with a robotic to your manufacturing workflow not solely makes its specific exercise further fixed, it moreover improves the consistency of your whole manufacturing circulation.
In Eli Goldratt’s seminal e-book “The Function”, the creator highlights how a selected robotic workstation models the work cadence for the rest of the manufacturing, serving to to remove a problematic bottleneck. People working in manufacturing sometimes focus on how the robotic makes them further fixed on account of they want to “beat the robotic” or maintain with its fixed throughput.
Lean Robotics provides a centered pathway that will help receive this consistency in your company. The first stage, mapping your current information course of, can sometimes help you to determine wasteful or inconsistent steps sooner than you automate with a robotic.
A pitfall to steer clear of proper right here is trying to fit your automation into your course of with out considering the rest of your manufacturing ranges.
9. Automation is simpler than ever
Perhaps the biggest revenue to using automation in 2025 is how easy it’s now to automate compared with the best way it was before now.
As soon as we first started serving to companies to automate their processes, they nonetheless wished to put in quite a few work all through deployment. Right this moment, together with a robotic to your manufacturing is simpler than ever sooner than.
Robotiq’s CEO Samuel Bouchard highlighted this at a Automatica trade fair, saying:
“With plug-and-play parts, you proceed to should do some little bit of the mixture. Our early adopters had been eager to do that. Now we’re working with people who don’t even know what a cobot is. It permits further people to undertake robots into their factories.”
With choices like utility kits you’ll have the ability to add robotics to your course of shortly and easily, serving to you to comprehend the outcomes you should make.
By eradicating boring, dangerous, dirty, and dear duties from the fingers of individuals, it is best to use automation to make the mark you want to make on the world.
As Samuel says, that is part of our core driver at Robotiq:
“Our mission for the earlier 14 years has been to free human fingers from repetitive duties. That’s nonetheless our mission. We see loads of cobots, nonetheless I nonetheless suppose we’re at a extraordinarily early stage. There could also be nonetheless loads of potential.”
How will you automate in 2025?
Automation in 2025 ensures a world previous merely effectivity or productiveness.
From enhanced labor dynamics to sustainability, consistency, and usefulness, its benefits ripple all through every aspect of enterprise. However, the necessary factor to reaping these rewards lies in making use of that automation thoughtfully and avoiding key pitfalls.
What’s going to the best way ahead for automation look like in your group?
Check out our application kits to see how merely you’ll have the ability to apply automation this 12 months.
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