Automation roadmap
Know what to automate before you spend anything
Automation capital often gets spent on the wrong step, especially if you're new to automating. A roadmap looks at your whole production process, not one machine, and tells you which step is actually worth the expense. We run them remotely, so you don't need to be near Omaha.
The problem
The expensive mistake is the right machine for the wrong step
A machine that does exactly what you asked is still wasted money if the line was never waiting on that step. The bottleneck is the step everything else waits on, and it's rarely the step that annoys people most. Only one of those two is worth spending capital on.
Sorting out which is which costs a conversation. Getting it wrong costs a machine.
What you get
A prioritized plan before a machine proposal
- 01 What to automate first, and why
- 02 Low effort, high impact first. A fixture, a layout change, or better scheduling is cheaper than a new machine, and the impact is often underrated
- 03 What not to buy yet, and what triggers have to be met to justify it later
- 04 Budget ranges you can plan against
What it looks at
Five areas, in this order
The order matters. Volume, process and cost need to be nailed down before we can connect the pain point to a solution.
What you make
Your products and volumes today, where volume goes in the next year or two, and how much the process changes between one product and the next.
How it's made today
The process start to finish, every step in order. What's done by hand, what runs on equipment you already own, and what's been tried before.
What it costs you
The labor that goes into one finished unit, how far down time is actually tracked, and whether those roles are hard to hire and keep.
Where it hurts
The real bottleneck, the step everything else waits on, and where scrap, rework, and quality complaints come from.
What you're working with
Floor space and room to grow, shifts and days per week, power and compressed air, and the budget range you have in mind.
How we keep it honest
If it doesn't pay for itself, we'll tell you
We're looking for a 12 to 24 month return on investment. If a step won't pay for itself in that window, we'll say so rather than sell you a machine. A recommendation to wait is a real outcome, and it's a cheaper one than the alternative.
No obligation to build with us
A roadmap isn't a commitment to work with us. Take it and get the machine quoted anywhere you like. That's a normal outcome and we'd rather you do that than buy the wrong thing from us.
If you do build with us, roadmap fees credit toward future automation work for 6 months.
Free checklist
Before You Automate
Seventeen questions worth answering before you spend anything. They're the same ones we work through at the start of every roadmap, grouped into the five areas above.
Rough answers are fine. The point is finding out which ones you can't answer yet, because those gaps are usually the first thing worth fixing. The last page explains how to read your own answers.
- Questions
- 17
- Sections
- 5
- Answer time
- One sitting, rough answers
- Cost
- Free
Scope
One line or the whole plant
A roadmap can cover any of these. If you're not sure which one you need, that's a fine thing to work out on the first call.
We're based in Omaha and run roadmaps remotely anywhere in the country. If the plan leads to equipment, we build it in our shop and ship it to you.
- • A single process or line
- • Multiple processes or lines
- • Your overall process
- • Multiple sites
Send the answers over
Fill in what you can and send it back. If the answers point at something worth doing, we'll tell you. If they point at waiting, we'll tell you that too.