How to Calculate the Return on Investment of a Robotic System

Return on Invest­ment (ROI) is an impor­tant aspect to cal­cu­late when decid­ing whether or not a robot­ic sys­tem would pay off in your shop. Basi­cal­ly, ROI is the amount of time it would take for a robot’s pro­duc­tion to pay itself back to the com­pa­ny through labor and sav­ings. The typ­i­cal pay­back for any robot­ic sys­tem, new or used, is between 6 – 18 months, depend­ing on the size of the ini­tial investment.

Why choose to switch to a robot­ic sys­tem instead of using man­u­al labor? The bot­tom line is this – a robot­ic sys­tem is usu­al­ly able to run at 95 per­cent effi­cien­cy, while the aver­age labor­er is usu­al­ly about 20 – 25 per­cent effi­cient dur­ing any giv­en shift. This is not the fault of the labor­er – humans require breaks, days off, and their bod­ies get tired through­out their shift. Robots do not run into this prob­lem, and in many cas­es, a robot can per­form the work of up to four man­u­al labor­ers, per shift. This means that one robot­ic sys­tem can do the work of 12 labor­ers over one giv­en day. That shows the return on invest­ment in the labor cost sav­ings alone. 

So, how do you go about cal­cu­lat­ing the ROI on your pos­si­ble or cur­rent robot­ic sys­tem? Robots​.com has made it easy for you with our ROI Cal­cu­la­tor. This cal­cu­la­tor will show you the sav­ings your com­pa­ny will accrue each year with the robot­ic sys­tem, using default assump­tions for your labor rates. These labor rates can be changed to reflect your exact labor rates, mak­ing the cal­cu­la­tions more accu­rate. How­ev­er, labor sav­ings are not the only fac­tor that should be con­sid­ered when cal­cu­lat­ing ROI. There are oth­er fac­tors, like train­ing costs, pro­gram­ming and runoff costs, war­ran­ty and ben­e­fits, etc., which are all account­ed for in our ROI Calculator. 

Once your robot­ic sys­tem has seen its full ROI after 6 – 18 months, the pos­si­bil­i­ty for sav­ings is lim­it­less for your com­pa­ny. There is a tremen­dous sav­ings and pay­back because you now pos­sess a robot with the abil­i­ty to func­tion for the next 20 years or more with­out issue. The sav­ings are expo­nen­tial at that point. 

Are you inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about ROI, and how it could ben­e­fit your company’s automa­tion plans? Then you should con­tact Robots​.com experts online or at 877−762−6881 for more information.