Robots-as-a-Service: 3 Ways Manufacturers Can Increase Productivity with Low Upfront Cost

Automation is a vast scope of technologies that work to reduce the interaction of humans in processes. Instead of workers performing a task or handling machinery, an automated system runs on its own. This frees up workers to accomplish more highly skilled responsibilities and for the company to improve the quality and quantity of its product while simultaneously having more time and funding to expand.To get more news about Robotics as a Service, you can visit glprobotics.com official website.

Understanding the many benefits that automation can offer workers, companies, and the U.S. economy, Formic Technologies is working to speed the rate of adoption in the manufacturing sector.

“We started Formic with the idea that if we make it easy enough and risk-free enough for manufacturers, we would see a massive wave of adoption,” says Saman Farid, CEO of Formic.

Traditionally, companies have had to spend a substantial chunk of their capital budget to purchase machines. More recently, Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) business models have popped up, which offer robots as an operational expense through a subscription service.

Formic has a radically different approach. The company understands that many small and mid-sized businesses don’t have the funds to purchase their own robots and often don’t want to get locked into lengthy, expensive RaaS contracts. Instead, Formic offers flexible “robots by the hour” without any upfront investment.

Founded in 2020 by Saman Farid and Misa Ilkhechi, the company has already garnered media attention, appearing in Wired, Reuters, The Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Crain’s Chicago Business.

“What sets us apart from the rest of the market is that we are not a vendor of equipment. We don't try to sell factories on this piece of equipment versus that piece of equipment or these bells and whistles versus those bells and whistles,” explains Farid. “What we really are is a partner. We put up all of the capital necessary to put automation into a customer's factory and guarantee that it will be productive for their business.”

In the latest episode of the Thomas Industry Podcast, Farid spoke with Cathy Ma, vice president of platform growth and engagement at Thomas and Xometry, about the three stages of automation.
Many companies have simply never considered automation. While they may be familiar with the concept, they may not know that any tasks in their facility are even eligible for automation. Although today we see automation everywhere from our Roomba® robot vacuum cleaners to the process automation that accelerates employee onboarding at our offices, automation may still seem like a futuristic technology that’s not accessible to a small American business.

The good news is that even if you don’t know much about automating, industry experts like those at Formic can help.

“We do an automation consultation for free upfront,” says Farid. “We'll walk the floor with our customers. Very quickly we can come back and suggest a few places where automation is a good fit for their facility. We might say this CNC tending job and that packaging job and that palletizing job over there are things that we suggest are good fits for automation.”

“About 75% of the customers that we serve, we’re the first time that they've ever used automation,” says Farid. “That's something that we're really proud of because it means that we truly are making something that was previously inaccessible suddenly accessible to most factories.”