You came up with a concept and compared it to your current situation. Now you’re going to make a decision about whether or not it’s a good project to pursue, and if so, what exactly that project should be. It is now the time to draw the line between what’s acceptable and what’s not for your Minimum Viable Product Cell (MVPC). This step starts with some financial calculations, and then some tests to prove the robotic cell's concepts and to eliminate uncertainty with de-risking the final design.

Calculate the Return on Investment

As with any capital investment in your factory, you probably have a process for calculating return on investment (ROI) and getting the investment approved. The ROI is calculated as follows:

This is a standard formula that any company owner or head of finance will be familiar with. We will discuss a few things you should consider when you calculate the ROI for your first robotic cell. At this point, you should be able to estimate the cost of investment as the sum of:

  • Cost of the material required (as identified at the robotic cell concept step)
  • Cost of labor needed to perform the tasks (going from a manual to a robotic cell) that were identified at the manual-robotic comparison step.
  • Lost of production during the startup (if that occur)

An ROI calculator can be used to find out how long it would take you to pay back your robotic investment. Our team has developed a template tool to help you with your calculation:

 Access the ROI calculator here

De-Risk the Concept

At this point, you might face some uncertainties regarding the feasibility or cost of the robotic cell concept. Resolving these uncertainties might be worth investing in some effort. Since it’s best to find out as soon as possible if certain aspects of the concept will never work, a small up-front investment here can save a lot of time and money with the remainder of the project. This step typically includes a “technical check” to make sure all the components are appropriate, and that it is possible to assemble and connect them together. 

Write down all the questions you still have about your concept. Then answer each question with an educated guess that’s phrased in the form of a hypothesis.

Go through your answers, and ask yourself:

  • How confident am I that this hypothesis is correct?
  • If my hypothesis is wrong, what will the consequences be?

Use the following template to clearly identify the potential risk of the project with the hypothesis and how to mitigate the risk: 

In other words, how important is it for that hypothesis to be right? Make sure you write your answers down. It helps to step back and observe your thoughts from a more detached perspective. For questions where it’s critical, you’ll either have to live dangerously (not recommended) or come up with a way to validate them. Assuming you choose to validate it, you should fill in the last collum of the table, define a potential validation method, estimate its time and cost and add this cost to the overall project cost. Don’t hesitate to turn to external vendors, many of which can perform technical validations for you with a proof of concept.

 

Last modified: Thursday, 16 April 2020, 2:50 PM