SERVICES
Factory of the Future Consulting
Automation strategy & tactical roadmaps to transform your manufacturing operations.
Your Partner for What’s Possible
Invio Automation’s Factory of the Future (FotF) consulting team is a trusted advisor for manufacturing companies seeking to modernize their operations via process improvement, industrial automation and digital factory solutions.
We work with our customers to collaboratively define their automation strategy. Our workshop approach helps identify and prioritize opportunities to improve the factory floor, from work-station design to lights-out automated solutions.
What makes our approach different?
Full Suite of Solutions
We approach problems with a continuous improvement mindset. Automation is just one of many ways to increase throughput. We look at material flows, lean manufacturing discipline, and operational process design. Our goal is to identify the right solution and technology for your specific need.
Proven ideas, grounded in reality
Machine Builders First. Invio has successfully delivered tooling and automation to factory floors for over 65 years. Our recommendations are grounded in reality. Every idea we investigate results in a tactical, implementable project opportunity.
Industry agnostic, brand agnostic
As a turnkey custom automation systems integrator for a diverse base of industries, we can help guide your teams in identifying the best solution for the application area, regardless of vendor or component supplier.
Holistic approach
We aim to deliver a holistic set of recommendations. Our deliverables provide not only an automation concept, but also a business case, CAPEX & ROI guidance, implementation plans, and organizational / training considerations.
Typical Statements of Work
- Automation Feasibility Evaluation
- Automation Readiness Audit
- CAPEX Planning
- ROI Assessment
- Bottleneck Alleviation
- Robotic Process Concepting and Simulation
- Throughput Study
- Discreet Event Simulation
- Direct Labor Savings
- Opportunity Mapping
- Investor Due Diligence
- Design for Automation / Design for Manufacturing
- Greenfield Facility Process Design
- Layout & Flow Optimization
- Material Handling Automation Assessments
- Tooling Concept Development
- Digital Factory Pilot Projects
- Proof of Principle / Process Prototyping
- Manufacturing Engineering Services (embedded contract support)
How it Works: Collaboratively Defining an Automation Strategy
During initial scoping discussions, our team work with you to collaboratively define the problem to be solved. What are the key levers to pull that will help your operation evolve? How can our engineering teams augment yours to accelerate your timelines?
Our consultants will lead the group in 1-3 day workshops to analyze the factory or Value stream from end to end. We want to speak with technicians, operators, engineers, and site leadership to understand the opportunity set from many angles. Workshops may involve use of our benchmarking frameworks or scoring matrices to help identify hot spots of opportunity to prioritize.
After the on-site engagement, our engineering teams get to work on developing 3D models and simulations that bring the workshop ideas to life. We meet weekly with the factory teams to provide updates on our progress, and to iterate on the designs as both Invio and the customer engineer teams learn more in the design process.
As the direction of engineering concepts begin to firm up, our consulting team focuses on tying all of the ideas together into a comprehensive business case. Each project opportunity evaluated by Invio will be assessed from a CAPEX / OPEX lens. We aim to provide customer teams with all of the requisite inputs needed to evaluate the ROI of a project.
At the end of a consulting engagement, customers can expect executive-ready presentations and 3D models or simulations that communicate the compelling vision. Our consultants often present out on their findings a in formal setting with both engineering and leadership teams. The most successful consulting engagements have resulted in clear, actionable roadmaps for how a factory can take the next steps towards on their automation journey.
Outcomes
Comprehensive Overview
For every project, we deliver a tactical, overview that includes current state evaluation results, future state system specifications, expected technical challenges with recommendations to mitigate those risk, a supporting business Case, and a plant transformation roadmap.
Reduces Time for Critical Decisions
The FotF process and approach gathers key stakeholders early in the process. This helps build consensus and create alignment on major investment decisions earlier. Our process aims to involve a cross-functional group so that more points of view are heard and incorporated into the long term project charters.
Foundational Roadmap Development
The aim of the FotF team is to serve as a collaborative partner working side-by-side with the customer’s engineering, product design, quality, and executive teams to develop the blueprints and roadmaps for transforming their factories to meet their future vision and business goals / objectives.
De-Risking Automation Deployment Decisions
The goal of the Factory of the Future team is to invest early in key engineering activities—pulling forward about 3-5% of a project’s total cost—to de-risk the overall scope and budget of major initiatives. The structured process greatly reduces uncertainties and potential risks, paving the way for transformational projects.
Utilize Our Expertise for Sustained Success
With a wealth of knowledge on what different technologies can achieve, and insights from successful thousands of deployments elsewhere, we help manufacturers navigate the right path to effectively deploying automation and robotics that can successfully scale across an enterprise.