The pros and cons of robotics

It seems as though robotics are just about everywhere these days. Rarely do manufacturing facilities function without robotics as they are found to be a cheaper solution to your overall manufacturing process from using humans to manufacturing every aspect of your products that need to be sold to your customers.

Robotics can be a blessing and a curse to a company. While it's nice to have a machine do everything for you, it can lead to issues down the road as customers notice the quality may not be the same as the quality they experienced from human hands.

Relying strictly on robotics can lead to frustration for a lot of employees as they will lose their jobs or their hours will be cut back significantly as they only need to oversee the machines. However using robotics poses great options for manufacturing plants as they have the ability to make more money because they can increase production. The machines often have 2-3 times the output of a single human being, sometimes the output is even higher.

The pro of robotics is that you can increase profits overall and reduce your overhead expenses as you aren't paying employees or you are paying employees a lot less. There has been debate about the pros and cons of robotics for several years as many companies see how it can improve the company for the long-run while others see that it takes away that personalized touch your customers may appreciate about your company in the beginning.

Investing in robotics initially will cost your company a lot of money as you will most likely need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars to purchase the equipment and to get started. It can take your company years to repay the money you need to borrow to purchase the equipment. This is why a number of organizations look into equipment leasing versus buying the equipment as it's an affordable solution to acquiring the expensive equipment you need.

A major con to robotics is that you still need employees to manage the machines.When a problem happens, the machine will continue to run instead of stopping and "thinking" of what needs to be done in order to fix the problem. Since the machines don't actually have a brain to think for themselves, you can lose a lot of money on wasted raw goods. This is why you still need to have skilled and qualified employees to run the machines and to solve the problems with the machines before they cause you to lose millions of dollars.

What type of reputation does your business have? When you move over to robotics, you will need to cut thousands of jobs, which can significantly hurt your reputation. A big con to robotics is that you are taking away jobs from workers that desperately need them in order to survive. Weigh the costs of implementing robotics in order to figure out if it is actually worthwhile or if you should continue using your employees to produce the products.

Robotics are great for the company as it can aid in your manufacturing process and it will help you acquire lower overhead costs, you always need to find a balance. It's not the best decision to completely change the entire factory to robotics so look for new jobs you can create to try and reduce the number of cutbacks you need to make as it will hurt your reputation and it can also cause problems since one person may be in charge of running 10-20 machines. They will not have the time or attention to offer to each machine in order to ensure they are working correctly.