Q: As you look again on UR’s 15-year historical past, what stands out essentially the most for you?
A: For me, it’s the power to look again to the start and see that the founders had been—and we nonetheless are—heading in the right direction. I at all times begin shows by speaking about our imaginative and prescient of empowering individuals. That will seem to be an odd imaginative and prescient for an organization that makes robots. However 15 years in the past, we noticed an untapped alternative to empower individuals to perform nice issues with a brand new sort of automation that’s simple to make use of and collaborates with them. That imaginative and prescient hasn’t modified.
Q: How have you ever been capable of preserve that imaginative and prescient as each UR and the market have developed and clients’ expectations have modified?
A: I consider that now we have been capable of preserve our imaginative and prescient and our focus, regardless of the fast evolution of the collaborative robotic market over the past years. Many consider that once you’re a disrupter and first mover that success is straightforward as you haven’t any competitors. However it’s fairly the alternative…. It has meant that now we have labored onerous to create a completely new market section, a brand new world distribution community, a brand new ecosystem of builders, and in the end a very new enterprise mannequin. There’s lots of work in creating consciousness, influencing requirements, and altering buyer perceptions and expectations, which have been influenced by their expertise of conventional robots.
As new gamers enter the market, I see that as a constructive for us. Firstly, it’s a validation that we’re heading in the right direction, and it additional helps the attention throughout the market and thereby expands our potential buyer base. Clients usually don’t need to have a single-sourcing scenario of their provide chain and manufacturing with the intention to keep away from threat. We had been constructing a completely new class, and lots of the bigger clients primarily kicked the tires for a few years, validating our know-how, however hesitated to undertake our merchandise absolutely. Nevertheless, as the full market grew, our progress scaled quick as a result of clients had options and it additional legitimized the know-how.
However clients’ expectations regarding high quality have additionally elevated through the years, as they deploy extra superior purposes of their manufacturing processes. It is a pure maturing of the market and requires us to repeatedly finetune our know-how but in addition our enterprise mannequin as a complete. And that journey doesn’t cease, as purposes, settings and circumstances proceed to evolve. We should work nearer with our channel and ecosystem companions to get even nearer to finish customers over the following years.
