The future looks bright for automation, Rusanowski believes. “The underlying theme is that we have this extremely large—and growing—base of customers across a wide range of industries,” he explains. “And what ties it all together is that automation is absolutely essential to making U.S. and Arizona companies competitive in a world market.
If you try to do it with traditional human labor, then it becomes too expensive. If you try to go offshore to foreign companies [for cheaper labor], then you run into quality and delivery issues, along with supply chain control problems that also cost you money.”
Rusanowski says he believes that companies are finally realizing some of those challenges, and are trying to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
“We’re finding that we’re able to answer this need by taking on and automating some of these ergonomically challenging, or dangerous, or simply mundane jobs,” he explains. “We can put some automation into that process and get a two- to three-year payback on its cost. The bottom line is that it’s looking bright for automation and bright for manufacturing.”