Automation refers to the usage of expertise to finish duties and processes with minimal human intervention. The time period encompasses a spread of applied sciences from robotic palletizing cells to AI product administration instruments. Automation is remodeling industries and there are great advantages to automating components of your online business.
The case for automation is getting stronger yearly. Whereas 10 years in the past, we had been nonetheless introducing firms to the fundamental advantages of automating even one course of, now individuals usually come to us already understanding that they need to automate. And so they need to do it shortly and effectively.
There are a lot of advantages to including automation, significantly with robotics. Whereas a whole lot of discussions deal with the “easy advantages” of automation — like elevated effectivity, productiveness, and efficiency — there are numerous extra nuanced advantages to automation.
If you’d like your online business to thrive this 12 months, it is necessary to know the precise advantages which are most necessary proper now. It is also necessary to know what it is best to keep away from when automating, to flee frequent pitfalls.
Let’s discover 9 of the highest advantages of automation in 2025.
9 Advantages of Automation in 2025 (and What to Keep away from)
1. Flexibility and agility
With robotic automation, we frequently speak about flexibility and agility. These are each advantages that include automation however one is more and more extra related in 2025…
Versatile automation refers to methods that may meet deliberate modifications to process or product calls for. For instance, your organization may expertise seasonal manufacturing spikes. A versatile automation course of can adapt to those predictable modifications.
As Robotiq R&D Undertaking Supervisor, Nicolas Lauzier highlights, this agility and related good expertise may give your organization a aggressive edge:
“There may be an urgency for adopting automated options within the present financial local weather. In keeping with reviews, good manufacturing unit options would be the major drivers of competitiveness within the subsequent 5 years.”
A pitfall to keep away from right here is investing too closely in inflexible automation options. These are sometimes designed for mass manufacturing and may fall brief in at the moment’s fast-evolving markets.
2. Scale simply and adapt to alter
A standout good thing about automation is scalability. Not solely can the proper automation enable you to ramp up manufacturing to satisfy your strategic progress objectives, agile automation also can enable you to pivot manufacturing to deal with surprising market shifts.
In the course of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, we noticed that many firms that succeeded in adapting to the altering world state of affairs had invested in the proper automation earlier than the pandemic.
One technique that may be very helpful is to deploy “copy-paste” robotic cells. This includes deploying a specific utility as soon as after which replicating that very same cell to scale manufacturing.
An instance of copy-paste automation is in decentralized palletizing. This modular strategy includes including a palletizing cell to the top of every new manufacturing line. By incorporating this core end-of-line course of into the road itself, you keep away from needing a drastic reconfiguration of your facility each time you scale manufacturing.
A pitfall to keep away from right here is assuming that you understand what the market will need sooner or later or relying an excessive amount of on predictions. As an alternative, put money into automation that may assist you to adapt to modifications shortly after they occur.
3. Scale manufacturing regionally
Native manufacturing, empowered by collaborative robotic automation, is more and more thought-about a strategic alternative for producers.
For a few years, offshoring manufacturing was seen as the best way to scale manufacturing. Nevertheless, in recent times, reshoring manufacturing has change into standard. This shift is not only a pattern however is turning into a necessity within the quickly altering financial and geopolitical panorama.
By bringing manufacturing nearer to house, producers can expertise many advantages, together with diminished delivery prices, shorter lead instances, and the power to customise merchandise for native markets.
Reshoring with robotic automation additionally builds resilience into an organization’s operations by decreasing reliance on advanced world provide modifications.
A pitfall to keep away from with reshoring is to check solely the preliminary prices relatively than calculating the return on funding of automation in the long run. Offshored operations usually depend on low-cost labor, which may make automated options look extra expensive at first. Nevertheless, financial savings usually change into clear whenever you undertaking into the medium to long run.
4. Make higher selections with knowledge
Automation would not simply carry out key duties in your online business, it additionally generates invaluable knowledge. This knowledge can feed into your wider enterprise analytics and enable you to make higher, extra strategic selections.
Within the fashionable world, knowledge is significant for making good enterprise selections. With a robotic system, for instance, you possibly can generate knowledge that lets you maintain optimizing your robotic deployment and enhance efficiency.
Our eBook Analytics for Cobots highlights how collaborative robots can simplify capturing this important knowledge. By monitoring solely the proper metrics, you possibly can deal with those who instantly align along with your operational wants for the automated resolution.
Gathering this knowledge also can enable you to justify your previous selections, comparable to investing in automation within the first place. For instance, the information you gather from a collaborative robotic can assist you calculate the ROI and make selections about future automation tasks.
A pitfall to keep away from right here is monitoring pointless knowledge. Solely monitor and analyze knowledge that’s related to your wants and utility.
5. Solves workforce shortages
Labor scarcity is a rising problem in fashionable manufacturing and is an issue we’ve got been monitoring for a number of years. With an getting older workforce and fewer expert staff in key jobs (comparable to finish of line palletizing), automation is more and more the one choice for some firms.
Robotiq’s Nicholas Lauzier emphasizes the urgency of this case in 2024, stating:
“Research present that the labor scarcity producers at present face will not be more likely to diminish; in actual fact, it’s anticipated to worsen. As individuals retire, youthful staff more and more go for jobs with higher working circumstances and compensation, steering clear of producing positions.”
Automation gives a strategic response to this situation, enabling you to maximise the potential of your current groups. By permitting automated methods to take over the extra repetitive, mundane duties, you liberate your expert professionals for higher-value, extra intellectually stimulating actions.
A pitfall to keep away from will not be speaking the labor shortages to groups earlier than including automation. When individuals perceive why you’re including this new expertise, they’ll extra simply get on board.
6. Construct safer, higher workplaces
One of the understated advantages of automation is its skill to create higher workplaces. By addressing the “4 D’s of robotics” you take away the least interesting points of individuals’s jobs.
These 4 D’s check with duties which are uninteresting, harmful, soiled, or pricey. They’re often jobs that result in low morale, increased accident charges, decrease job high quality, and elevated operational prices. By automating them, you possibly can take away the burden on human staff and make their jobs extra rewarding.
Robots usually excel on the duties that people do not take pleasure in doing. For instance, a uninteresting job is perhaps a repetitive meeting process. When human staff do the identical process for hours on finish, they’ll change into demotivated, and the duty high quality is diminished. However a robotic will simply and constantly carry out the identical process for hours on finish.
A pitfall to keep away from right here will not be involving your group members within the deployment. If you contain individuals from the beginning, they usually take possession of the robotic deployment, main to raised outcomes.
7. Minimize waste and enhance sustainability
Sustainability has change into a central focus throughout many industries. As many firms look to align their operations with extra sustainable practices, automation can present a strong software to information this transformation.
Robotic automation, for instance, has been proven to make packaging processes extra sustainable. Packaging generally is a notoriously wasteful manufacturing stage, each in supplies and vitality utilization. With the proper automation resolution, you possibly can sort out this downside and contribute to bettering your organization’s general sustainability.
By including collaborative robotic packaging, you possibly can optimize your workflow and lower materials use to a minimal. For instance, by monitoring your robotic, you possibly can tweak and regulate the quantity of fabric utilized in packaging to chop it to a minimal. This isn’t a one-off exercise however relatively a step it is best to revisit on occasion to see how one can additional cut back waste.
A pitfall to keep away from at this stage is your automated processes in isolation. Generally, you possibly can cut back waste considerably throughout robotic deployment by noticing different inefficiencies in the remainder of your operations.
8. Guarantee constant operations
Whereas robotic automation is commonly most celebrated for bettering effectivity and productiveness, maybe its most transformational profit is consistency.
Not like handbook processes, automation is very constant. That is essential in enterprise processes because it ensures your organization is dependable and maintains a excessive degree of product high quality. Including a robotic to your manufacturing workflow not solely makes its particular process extra constant, it additionally improves the consistency of your complete manufacturing movement.
In Eli Goldratt’s seminal guide “The Objective”, the writer highlights how a specific robotic workstation units the work cadence for the remainder of the manufacturing, serving to to take away a problematic bottleneck. Folks working in manufacturing usually speak about how the robotic makes them extra constant as a result of they need to “beat the robotic” or sustain with its constant throughput.
Lean Robotics gives a targeted pathway that may assist obtain this consistency in your online business. The primary stage, mapping your current handbook course of, can usually enable you to determine wasteful or inconsistent steps earlier than you automate with a robotic.
A pitfall to keep away from right here is making an attempt to suit your automation into your course of with out contemplating the remainder of your manufacturing phases.
9. Automation is simpler than ever
Maybe the largest profit to utilizing automation in 2025 is how simple it’s now to automate in comparison with the way it was up to now.
After we first began serving to firms to automate their processes, they nonetheless wanted to place in various work throughout deployment. Nowadays, including a robotic to your manufacturing is simpler than ever earlier than.
Robotiq’s CEO Samuel Bouchard highlighted this at a Automatica commerce honest, saying:
“With plug-and-play parts, you continue to have to do a little bit of the mixing. Our early adopters had been prepared to try this. Now we’re working with individuals who do not even know what a cobot is. It permits extra individuals to undertake robots into their factories.”
With options like utility kits you possibly can add robotics to your course of shortly and simply, serving to you to realize the outcomes you need to make.
By eradicating uninteresting, harmful, soiled, and pricey duties from the arms of people, you should use automation to make the mark you need to make on the world.
As Samuel says, that is a part of our core driver at Robotiq:
“Our mission for the previous 14 years has been to free human arms from repetitive duties. That is nonetheless our mission. We see a whole lot of cobots, however I nonetheless suppose we’re at a very early stage. There may be nonetheless a whole lot of potential.”
How will you automate in 2025?
Automation in 2025 guarantees a world past simply effectivity or productiveness.
From enhanced labor dynamics to sustainability, consistency, and usefulness, its advantages ripple throughout each side of enterprise. Nevertheless, the important thing to reaping these rewards lies in making use of that automation thoughtfully and avoiding key pitfalls.
What is going to the way forward for automation seem like in your organization?
Try our utility kits to see how simply you possibly can apply automation this 12 months.
What profit most speaks to your wants proper now? Inform us within the feedback beneath or be a part of the dialogue on LinkedIn or Fb.