Four reasons your next hire should be a BotX Welder

Has the shortage of skilled welders been a challenge for your company to meet your business goals? Are you regularly dealing with temp agencies only to feel like you've hit a revolving door of candidates? You are not alone. Nine out of ten companies say that their biggest challenging is finding skilled workers, and the shortage of skilled welders is perhaps most acute.

Let's explore how robots-as-a-service and BotX can help solve these challenges. There are also other options that we’ll write about so stay tuned and subscribe to this blog.

1) Addressing the skills gap and labor shortage

For several decades the lack of emphasis and investment in skilled trades while at the same time a push towards four year colleges has created a shortage of skilled workers for the manufacturing sector. The average age for welders in the United States is 57 years old and with the retiring baby boomers the shortage of skilled welders is projected to get sharply worse. Further, the resurgence of the energy and construction sectors in the United States has lured high skilled welders out of manufacturing and into these lucrative industries.

Hiring a robot, also known as robots-as-a-service, can tackle the shortage of skilled welders by providing a productivity tool to your existing welders. Unlike traditional robotic welding solution, which trade off flexibility for throughput, systems like the BotX provide manufacturers with a high degree of flexibility. We’ve written extensively about the evolution of robotic welding, so be sure to check it out.

For businesses with a serious shortage of welders, your existing skilled welders can setup and oversee multiple BotX Welders. This setup allows your employees to let the BotX do the tedious, repetitive parts while your skilled welders focus on the more complicated and challenging pieces. Once the skilled welders setup a part on the BotX, any operator can tend to the system and get the consistency that was originally taught to the BotX Welder.

2) Scale your business

Planning can be one of the most challenging aspects to any business. Many manufacturers, particularly large ones, go through an annual budget cycle. The sales team puts together their best estimate of the following year by way of a sales forecast. The operations team will take this forecast to determine how they need to staff and what they will plan for as far as capital expenditure (CAPEX) is concerned. Different organizations do their planning process differently but rarely will you find leadership of a company excited about the process.

Process aside, the exercise is useful. How will you choose to invest the company’s resources to achieve your business goals? What if the forecast is wrong? What if the economy slows? What if you lose that key account? What if the new equipment takes longer to get online or doesn’t deliver the expected out? What if you’re wrong?

All of these questions is one of the key reasons why the “Product”-as-a-service business models exist and thrive (There are other attractive benefits, too, which we’ll get into in later posts). The needs of your business are unpredictable. When sales takes an order, you’re expected to deliver, quickly. When business slows, you’re expected to cut back, quickly.

The BotX Welder allows metal fabricators to scale their business up and down, on demand, with short notice. The typical CAPEX cycle, approval processes, equipment lead times, and time to deliver value can often take months, if not years. We can help you cut through the red tape of your organization and scale your business up (and down!) quickly.

3) Simplicity

Have you seen the teach pendant from a traditional robot? It takes a specialized skillset to learn to program, troubleshoot, and debug one of these bad boys! If you’re a member of that small club you should be proud of your knowledge and understanding.

But there is a significantly larger population of us that doesn’t want to learn the complexities of programming a particular brand / model / vintage traditional robot. We want to make parts and focus on delivering value to our customers.

To successfully deliver a robot-as-a-service it needs to be dead simple to use. If you’re looking to hire a BotX for your manufacturing company, you want to be productive quickly. And the key to delivering on this promise is simplicity and ease of setup. Within an hour of showing up with the equipment, our team will be striking an arc and training your operators and skilled welders how to setup your parts on the BotX.

The BotX is powered by sophisticated cloud and mobile software that unlocks a powerful collaborative welding robot. You will quickly be teaching your BotX through our mobile app on your existing, familiar smart phone or tablet.

But don’t mistake simple and elegant with wimpy. The best designed products abstract away the complexity so that you can focus on what you need to do - and we strive for that mark in our software. We think you’ll be blown away with the simplicity!

4) Community

Don’t fret that you’re not part of the elusive community of traditional robot programmers. We’ve got you covered!

You can count on your best employees: they are reliable, enthusiastic, determined, and do what it takes to win. These employees love what they do and are partners in your success. We should celebrate them regularly 🥳!

Hiring a robot is like hiring another world class employee. But instead of getting a single “employee”, your BotX is backed by a team of experts that are partners in your success. It’s like your business just hired a superhero 🦸‍♂️ and gained a superpower.

Included in the hourly rate of the BotX comes not only regular software updates and enhancements but also the support of automation experts and a network of welding specialists. The ongoing employment of a BotX comes with a special relationship that a traditional equipment supplier simply cannot match.

When you have questions about the system or want to understand how to accomplish a task, reach out in the Hirebotics mobile app and get a response in minutes. When you need help with a particular weld setup or process parameters, reach out in the same way and get assistance from local weld process specialists. And when you have ideas or feature requests, post an Idea in the mobile app and watch other users vote up the best ideas to prioritize new features and updates.

Join Us

The evolution of the BotX Welder is driven by you. Your feedback and needs play a vital role in shaping the future of robotic welding.

Join us on this journey to change the game in robotic welding. Contact us to find out how you can help!