You are not buying a robot.
You are choosing who you will be on the phone with at 6 a.m. three years from now, when the line is down and nobody can figure out why.
That is the actual decision. The equipment is the easy part to compare.
What Does a Robotic Systems Integrator Do?
A robotic systems integrator designs, builds, programs, installs, and supports a complete automated system: the robot, the fixturing, the tooling, the controls, the safety systems, and the integration with the equipment you already run.
The robot itself comes from a manufacturer like FANUC, ABB, Yaskawa, Daihen, or Universal Robots. Anyone can buy one. The integrator is the company responsible for turning it into a machine that makes your part, at your rate, in your plant.
That responsibility spans:
- Application engineering, determining whether and how the process can be automated
- Mechanical design, including fixturing, tooling, guarding, and part handling
- Controls engineering, PLC programming, motion control, HMI, and electrical design
- Safety engineering, risk assessment, guarding design, and standards compliance
- Build and runoff, assembling and proving the system before it ships
- Installation and commissioning in your facility, integrated with existing equipment
- Training and support, so your team can run it and someone answers when it faults
An integrator who owns all of that is a turnkey partner. An integrator who owns some of it is a subcontractor, and you are the one holding the remaining pieces together.
What “Turnkey” Should Actually Mean
Turnkey gets used loosely. Here is a working definition worth holding vendors to.
Turnkey means one company is accountable for the system working, from design through installation through support, with no gaps where responsibility transfers to you or to a vendor you have to manage.
The test is simple. When something does not work, how many phone calls does it take to find the person who owns the problem?
If the answer is more than one, it was not turnkey. It was a bundle.
| What you are told | What to verify |
|---|---|
| “We provide turnkey solutions” | Who designs the fixturing, who writes the PLC code, who runs the risk assessment, and who installs |
| “We handle integration” | Whether that includes tying into your existing conveyance, controls, and data systems |
| “Full support after installation” | Response time commitments, spare parts availability, and whether the original engineers are still involved |
| “We have done this before” | A project of comparable complexity, and permission to talk to that customer |
The Questions Worth Asking
Five questions will tell you most of what you need to know.
Do you design custom, or configure from a catalog?
Both are legitimate businesses. They are not the same purchase. A catalog-based provider is faster and cheaper when your application genuinely matches a standard configuration. A custom integrator costs more upfront and is the only real option when your part, your rate, or your footprint does not fit the catalog.
The failure mode to watch for is a catalog provider force-fitting a standard machine into a non-standard application. That system will run, and it will run at a fraction of its rated performance for the rest of its life.
Ask directly: is this a standard product adapted to us, or a system designed around our process?
Who is responsible for the parts of the system that are not the robot?
The robot is maybe a quarter of the engineering. Fixturing, end-of-arm tooling, part handling, controls, and safety are the rest, and they are where projects fail.
Ask who designs each of those. If the answer includes outside firms, ask who manages them, who is accountable when the fixture and the weld sequence conflict, and whose budget absorbs a redesign.
What does your support look like in year three?
Every integrator supports you during commissioning. The question is what happens after.
Ask about response time, remote support capability, spare parts, and whether the engineers who built your system are still at the company and still reachable. Ask for a reference from a customer whose system has been running five years or more. That conversation is more revealing than any capabilities presentation.
How do you handle the things you did not expect?
Every custom automation project encounters something unplanned: a part that varies more than the samples suggested, a facility constraint nobody documented, a supplier delay.
Ask how they handled it last time. A straight answer with a specific example tells you how they will behave on your project. A polished answer about their process does not.
Can I talk to a customer whose project went sideways?
Nobody has a perfect record over 25 years. An integrator willing to connect you with a customer who had a hard project, and who stayed a customer afterward, is showing you something a reference list cannot.
The Warning Signs
- A quote that arrives with no questions asked. If nobody asked about your part variation, your rate, your shift structure, or your existing controls, they are quoting a guess.
- Cycle times without conditions. A rate quoted with no assumptions about part presentation, changeover, or uptime is a marketing number.
- Pressure to skip the risk assessment. Never acceptable. Not on cobots either.
- No runoff at their facility before shipment. Proving the system in your plant, on your production schedule, is the most expensive place to find problems.
- The engineers are not in the room. If you only ever meet salespeople, you have no way to evaluate technical depth.
- Vagueness about the data layer. If nobody can tell you what the system will log and where that data goes, plan on retrofitting it later at a higher price.
Getting the ROI Case Right Before You Shop
The strongest position to negotiate from is knowing your own numbers first.
Most manufacturers underestimate what their manual process costs, because they look at base wages rather than fully-burdened labor. Add the burden rate, typically 1.4x or higher in non-union manufacturing, plus HR and recruiting overhead, downtime, scrap and rework, safety exposure, and the throughput you are not capturing. The number is usually considerably larger than the first estimate.
Do that math before you take quotes, and two things change. You know what payback period actually justifies the project, and you can tell the difference between an integrator solving your problem and one selling you more machine than you need.
The Force Design ROI Calculator runs that analysis in about five minutes and produces a five-year projection with a payback period you can put in a CapEx request. It is free and it does not require a sales call.
How Force Design Answers These Questions
We would rather show our answers than claim them.
Custom, not catalog. Force Design has designed and built custom automation equipment for 25 years, more than 40 systems spanning welding, assembly and testing, packaging, depalletizing, machine tending, and vision inspection. Our portfolio is the record.
One accountable team. Mechanical designers, controls designers, applications engineers, and project management all work from one building in Troy, Ohio. When the fixture design affects the controls sequence, that conversation happens down the hall.
We stay after install. Equipment support is a service we offer, not a courtesy we extend. Aisin Light Metals has pointed to responsiveness after installation as the reason they keep coming back. Superior Plastics specifically noted that we scoped to their actual needs rather than selling equipment beyond their budget.
We tell you when the answer is no. Truth is one of our four core values, alongside Craftsmanship, Teamwork, and Respect. Sometimes the honest answer is that a process is not ready to automate, or that a smaller first project makes more sense. Hearing that during scoping costs nothing. Discovering it during runoff costs a great deal.
Considering a Project?
If you are heading into a new budget year with an automation project on the list, the best first step is a conversation, not a quote request.
Contact Force Design for twenty minutes with an engineer who has solved this before. No pitch deck. Just a straight conversation about what is slowing your line down and whether automation is the right answer for it.
If you would rather do more homework first, our ebook Working With Your Automation Vendor covers how these relationships work from scoping through support, and the Automation Equipment Planning Guide covers what to define before you request a single quote.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a robotic systems integrator?
A robotic systems integrator is an engineering company that designs, builds, programs, installs, and supports complete automated systems. They select and program the robot, but their real work is everything around it: fixturing, tooling, controls, safety systems, and integration with your existing equipment.
What is the difference between a robot manufacturer and a systems integrator?
A robot manufacturer, such as FANUC, ABB, Yaskawa, or Daihen, builds the robot arm and its controller. A systems integrator designs the application around that robot so it performs a specific job in a specific plant. Buying a robot without an integrator leaves the hardest engineering work to you.
How much does a custom robotic system cost?
Cost varies widely with application complexity, cycle time, part variation, and the number of stations. Rather than starting from a price range, start from your payback requirement: calculate what the manual process costs you annually in fully-burdened labor, scrap, downtime, and lost throughput, then determine what capital investment that supports.
How long does a custom automation project take?
Most custom systems run several months from purchase order to production, covering design, build, runoff at the integrator’s facility, installation, and commissioning. Well-defined scope at the start is the single biggest factor in staying on schedule.
Should I choose a local systems integrator?
Proximity is worth real money in support response, on-site commissioning, and the ability to visit during the build and runoff. It is not the only factor, but for a system you expect to run for a decade, a partner who can be at your plant quickly is a meaningful advantage.
What questions should I ask a robotic systems integrator before signing?
Ask who designs the fixturing and controls, who runs the risk assessment, what support looks like in year three, whether the system will be proven at their facility before shipment, what data the system logs, and whether you can talk to a customer whose project encountered problems.
Force Design Inc. is a custom robotic systems integrator based in Troy, Ohio, with 25+ years of experience designing and building welding, assembly, packaging, and material handling automation for manufacturers in automotive, food and beverage, medical, and general manufacturing.
