You are not alone in this concern. The areas for consideration surround your organization’s abilities to have the skills and support needed to bring the automation in-house. 

To start this process there is a potential need for in-house R&D testing of process testing for discrete aspects of the automation. If so, the next stage would be to do manual assembly operations of your product, while keeping in mind assembly scaling from pilot to full-scale automation when designing product fixtures.

Depending on the number of SKUs in your product or product families, you may need to consider flexible manufacturing.

The considerations are two-fold. It would be best to first consider where your company is along the automation roadmap. Is your production levels low enough that manual production methods satisfy the production quantities? If you have outgrown manual operations, do you need to consider a semi-automatic machine for a medium-level of production quantities? 

At this stage, there may be a need for the added functionality that robotic cells would satisfy. When your production needs surpass these stages, high-throughput, automated assembly is the next stage. While at this highest point, it is also important to maintain the highest OEE possible by monitoring and assessing machine optimization.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks we see for customers looking to bring on automation is internal company skills. A company that is implementing automation systems will require the appropriate level of mechanical and control systems engineering, technicians, and of importance, qualified and trained operators.

There also must be a commitment to spare parts inventory, quality assessment of raw material along with raw material product consistency.

In the past couple of decades, the need to satisfy large demands at an accelerated pace has had manufacturers jump from product concept to full-scale production.

While that method has had some successes, our recent experiences with customers have found that a “de-risking” path to full-scale automation be taken. Taking it in small bites and breaking the automation down to discrete prototypes and pilot production can reduce the risk.

Developing the process and method at each stage of the automated process will help deliver a higher confidence for full-scale production.