Industrial automation today is largely treated as a per-project initiative, filling cracks as they appear, and overhauling engineering teams with each effort. According to Harvard Business Review, roughly 12% of manufacturing businesses have invested in robotics; only 6% have successfully automated at scale. This proves many businesses remain zoomed in on disjointed problem areas, blocking meaningful growth.
By failing to use a standardized approach to automation, an executive also loses the ability to forecast automation targets and objectives. As a result, siloed automation projects can’t be predicted or rolled into a board-level goal. Here’s how standardized automation simplifies implementation, creates consistent performance, and enables business growth.
Why Standardization Becomes Essential As You Scale
Many organizations run five plants with five automation architectures, creating fragmented, multi-vendor stacks with varying output quality. While each architecture may be somewhat streamlined on its own, collaborating, monitoring, or updating centrally remains out of the question.
A Software-Defined Automation Platform is key here to achieve business objectives and new project implementation. It introduces reusable templates, repeatable logic, and a single source of truth that takes growth from constant reinvention to replication.
And the results speak for themselves. For example, sustainable packaging solution Polykar saw a 30% increase in production by deploying 2 cobot palletizers in an Edmonton facility, and later replicating the same hardware and software logic in Montreal with pre-trained operators. Quebec-based furniture maker Foliot saw similar gains with their Las Vegas expansion. By scaling their cobot fleet with replicable systems, they saw a 15% throughput increase and paid off that hardware investment in roughly 16 months.
In both scenarios, the boost in operational efficiency meant employees could shift from repetitive, labor-intensive tasks to high-value roles.
Consistency of Performance and Why It’s Essential to the ROI Case
Evaluating ROI potential is, of course, essential before any automation implementation. But when deployments are inconsistent and siloed, the larger economic picture is skewed.
Consistency, while an operational nicety, is also a precondition for accurate benchmarking. Manufacturers like Sears Seating are a great example of how consistency in design and standardization pays dividends. They were starting fresh in a new facility, and opted for flexible, repeatable automation via modular conveyors, optimized structural systems, and simplified actuator and robot programming throughout the floor. The result looked like:
- A 50% gain in cost-effectiveness compared to building in-house
- 15-day readiness on the factory floor
- 20% lower operating costs
- 15-month payback thanks to a reusable design library
The unexpected benefit is meaningful upskilling for the mechanical engineering team. Because the entire factory floor runs on a replicable system, engineers and executives alike could better predict performance and expansion ROI.
Acceleration and the Speed Dividend
For businesses looking to automate, implementation speed compounds their competitive advantage with every adoption.
Once an initial deployment is standardized, each subsequent site rolls out faster thanks to amortized engineering and vertical integration. For example, The Feed, the world’s largest sports nutrition marketplace for endurance athletes, needed a way to integrate two existing conveyor systems. The goal was to produce orders faster and more reliably.
The team used Vention’s software platform, particularly MachineLogic with digital twin technology, to simulate the output of a new standardized conveyor system. Once they could envision the result, deployment took 6 weeks, rather than 40 weeks as quoted by conventional solutions.
The team could also access centralized collaboration and monitoring through MachinePortal. This single source of truth not only made processes faster, but also improved coordination and multi-site governance.
By opting for the most centralized, repeatable solution, The Feed quickly ramped to fulfilling 600 orders per hour. Waiting any longer could have meant their biggest competitors capturing the ROI curve first.
Shift the Frame From Project to Program
Automation ROI in manufacturing has long been a per-project calculation, but by standardizing, it becomes a network effect. Building repeatable automation means every new site inherits the last one’s economic successes, and future scaling doesn’t require upending the engineering team.
Looking to learn more about standardizing automation for your factory floor? Check out Vention’s ROI calculator.
