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 flexibility to look again to the start and see that the founders have been—and we nonetheless are—heading in the right direction. I at all times begin displays by speaking about our imaginative and prescient of empowering folks. That will appear 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 folks to perform nice issues with a brand new type of automation that’s straightforward to make use of and collaborates with them. That imaginative and prescient hasn’t modified.
Q: How have you ever been in a position to 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 in a position to preserve our imaginative and prescient and our focus, regardless of the speedy evolution of the collaborative robotic market over the past years. Many consider that if you’re a disrupter and first mover that success is simple as you don’t have any competitors. However it’s fairly the other…. It has meant that now we have labored onerous to create a wholly new market section, a brand new world distribution community, a brand new ecosystem of builders, and finally a totally new enterprise mannequin. There’s numerous 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 optimistic 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. Prospects sometimes don’t need to have a single-sourcing state of affairs of their provide chain and manufacturing as a way to keep away from danger. We have been constructing a wholly new class, and most of the bigger clients primarily kicked the tires for a few years, validating our expertise, however hesitated to undertake our merchandise absolutely. Nevertheless, as the full market grew, our development scaled quick as a result of clients had alternate options and it additional legitimized the expertise.
However clients’ expectations regarding high quality have additionally elevated over time, as they deploy extra superior functions of their manufacturing processes. This can be a pure maturing of the market and requires us to repeatedly finetune our expertise but in addition our enterprise mannequin as an entire. And that journey doesn’t cease, as functions, settings and circumstances proceed to evolve. We must work nearer with our channel and ecosystem companions to get even nearer to finish customers over the subsequent years.
