Why are Robotics Key to Reindustrialization

In my recent article Reindustrialization Won’t Work without Robotics that ran in The Robot Report I tried to summarize my thoughts on the push for renewed manufacturing in the United States and western economies more broadly.

As the U.S. accelerates reindustrialization through tariffs, tax policy, and aggressive “Made in USA” initiatives, manufacturers face a critical challenge: reshoring without robotics isn’t just difficult – it’s impossible.

To compete globally, American manufacturing must achieve speed, scale, and precision that traditional labor-intensive methods can’t deliver economically. 

Production robotics are essential to making reshoring financially viable particularly in the targeted industries like defense, space/aerospace, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals.

To enable continuous robotic operation, factories must scale volume production with the ability to autonomously load and unload the vast array of different machines in any given plant while ensuring quality. 

Known as advanced machine tending, the robots must operate with autonomy to coordinate multiple processing steps – including inspection and test – on the full range of parts and products the plant makes.

Using robots in this way – directly for the means of production – automates the core operations of the factory to create process flow, productivity and utilization boosting factory throughput and profitability to the levels required for economic justification.

But most factories still rely on isolated “islands of automation” with standalone robot installations. If integration is attempted at all, extensive custom software coding is required for each setup. 

Due to the nature of these implementations, companies have difficulty getting robots working properly with the machines resulting in coordination issues and downtime.

To overcome this, manufacturers need standardized, software-driven coordination for robotic automation. 

That means robotic production software that enables robot multi-machine communication, connects directly with existing IT systems like ERP and MES, and supports full-factory robotic orchestration.

Factories exploring targeted AI pilots with robots are quickly realizing the need for coordination across the various different use cases from device-based physical AI to robotic process-level agentic AI.  

Utilizing standardized robotic production software in these cases provides extensive contextual data for faster training along with the broader orchestration layer for operational compliance.

From our perspective at Flexxbotics, without robots running the actual means of production, reshored factories simply cannot deliver the cost structures, quality, or productivity necessary for sustained competitiveness.

What’s your take, have robots become foundational infrastructure essential to reindustrialization success? Or do they remain just an incremental efficiency booster?

You can read the full article at  https://www.therobotreport.com/reindustrialization-wont-work-without-robotics/