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 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 folks. That will look like 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 sort 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 keep that imaginative and prescient as each UR and the market have advanced and prospects’ expectations have modified?
A: I imagine that we’ve got been in a position to keep our imaginative and prescient and our focus, regardless of the speedy evolution of the collaborative robotic market over the past years. Many imagine that whenever you’re a disrupter and first mover that success is simple as you don’t have any competitors. However it’s fairly the alternative…. It has meant that we’ve got labored onerous to create a wholly new market section, a brand new international distribution community, a brand new ecosystem of builders, and in the end a totally new enterprise mannequin. There’s a variety 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. Prospects sometimes don’t wish to have a single-sourcing state of affairs of their provide chain and manufacturing with a purpose to keep away from threat. We had been constructing a wholly new class, and lots of the bigger prospects primarily kicked the tires for a few years, validating our know-how, however hesitated to undertake our merchandise totally. Nevertheless, as the overall market grew, our development scaled quick as a result of prospects had options and it additional legitimized the know-how.
However prospects’ 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 an entire. And that journey doesn’t cease, as purposes, 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.
