Scott Harris Makes New Investment in Flexxbotics

Author: Tyler Bouchard, Co-founder & CEO of Flexxbotics 

We’re pleased to announce that Scott Harris, co-founder of SOLIDWORKS and Onshape, has invested in Flexxbotics. Scott has been an advisor and mentor to me for a number of years as we’ve been scaling up Flexx. This investment marks an exciting development as we continue to innovate in smart factory robotics software solutions.

Scott Harris is a renowned figure in the world of manufacturing software and CAD, and he brings a huge amount of knowledge and experience to our team. His involvement has helped shape our vision and the way we think about our cloud services and software+hardware interfacing.

As we developed our FlexxCORE™ technology – our unique breakthrough – he made it clear that seamlessly connecting and coordinating robots with existing automation equipment would be a real challenge given all the incompatibilities. The result was our laser focus on making it more powerful, flexible and open than had been done previously.

We both believe that interoperability between robots and machines in the factory will be critical to achieving ‘lights out’ manufacturing. That also led to our realization of the importance of process control.

The ability for next-gen machining environments using robotics to truly achieve autonomous manufacturing relies on their ability to first achieve autonomy in  process control.

Scott’s practicality in thinking about these types of scenarios has really led to some of our most groundbreaking work. Connectivity and bi-directional communication are necessary foundations to orchestrate robots and equipment in the smart factory.

From my perspective as someone who has been in manufacturing technology my entire career, Scott’s two systems have had a profound impact on how we all design and make products. Both SOLIDWORKS, acquired by Dassault Systèmes, and OnShape, acquired by PTC have redefined the industry forever. 

This investment and Scott’s continued mentorship will help us as we accelerate our engineering efforts and expand our product offerings. Our collaboration not only strengthens our position, it also consistently brings us an exceptionally innovative perspective to this rapidly evolving field of robot-driven manufacturing in the era of Industry 4.0 digitalization.