He sees other problems, too. Like the issue of capacity. Carlisle and his people have been doing a lot of work of late with people making consumer electronics and cell phones. He points out that in the case of a product in these areas, the product may have a nine-month life cycle, and the ramp up period for the automation program may take six months. This is far from being an ideal circumstance.
Systems integration is.
In other words, Carlisle maintains that the problem with automation has little to do with the reliability or the performance of robot arms. But if a system takes six months to get up and running, and the life-cycle of a product is nine months, then there is a whole lot of investment not being optimized. Offered as an alternative to bowl feeders, the FlexFeeder system utilizes a vision-guided robot to pick up parts. When part types change, all that's typically needed is a program change. This is the sort of capital reusability that Carlisle thinks is important for automation installations.