Coatings manufacturers have found steady income in the industrial coating space, but for many, a lack of investment and underlying challenges at applicator and client firms could be causing the industry to lag in growth when it need not. In these cases, many coaters have been faced with challenges like finding and retaining skilled labor, meeting demand without compromising quality, or simply maintaining high productivity and throughput without the need for constant rework.
In all of these cases, robotics offers the potential to enable these manufacturers to do more. But given that many of these firms are high-mix, most have not had any practical opportunity to use robots given the programming requirements and production constraints needed to properly process all the various parts that they handle.