With uncertainty looming over tariffs in the United States, some manufacturers are turning to machines-as-a-service to automate.
Tariffs continue to dominate the news, and the impact is being felt in manufacturing.
But the show must go on. Orders must be fulfilled, and parts must be created. And automation drives a lot of manufacturing processes.
How are manufacturers automating tasks when they’re not sure what tariffs will be implemented and which are being paused?
Perhaps one of the most surprising winners in the current tariff environment is machines-as-a-service (MaaS). The model involves renting equipment along with service and data analytics through a full-service provider.
How one company is addressing automation needs
Whispers about tariffs started in late 2024 and into early 2025, and that’s about the time Saman Farid, chief executive officer of Formic, a full-service MaaS provider headquartered in Woodridge, Illinois, started to see a run on his company’s services.
“I think there’s a lot of uncertainty manufacturers face,” Farid told Control Engineering in an exclusive interview. “Starting in the December, January timeframe, we started hearing about possible tariffs coming toward Canada and Mexico.”
About that time, some manufacturers started to wonder about hedging against the uncertainties they might face should those tariffs become a reality.
“Raw materials costs may fluctuate, my ability to source from overseas suppliers may fluctuate,” Farid noted. “Knowing the environment is changing so much, it’s hard for me to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into equipment I might not need a year from now.”
And that’s where MaaS comes in.
It’s not just renting robots
On the surface, MaaS sounds like renting automation equipment for short-term production needs. But that’s only part of the equation, Farid cautioned.
“We provide full-service automation, not just rental,” he said. “What we’ve found is that for a lot of small- to medium-sized manufacturers in particular, renting doesn’t actually solve the biggest problem around deploying robots, which is ‘I don’t know what to buy, I don’t know how to buy, I don’t know how to manage it, I don’t know how to maintain it.”
His company, he said, installs, engineers, deploys, maintains, provides spare parts and reconfigures as needed to help smaller manufacturers fill empty headcounts.
His three biggest clients? Packaged consumer goods producers, metal fabricators and plastic injection molding facilities.
And what exactly are they adding to their facilities?
“Palletizers are a very common one, case packing robotic applications, conveyors are always needed. Autonomous mobile robots for different use cases,” he said.
AMRs are particularly useful in plant sanitation, especially for food production.
“What we allow these factories to do is to suddenly scale up their throughput and the quality of their products without having to go deep into their pockets to come up with a lot of capital expenditures for that,” Farid said.
MaaS brings automation without capex
One of the big pressures large manufacturers face is the inability to source parts. It’s something the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent piece about the surprising winners of what it calls tariff turmoil.
“A lot of large manufacturers used to buy their parts from overseas,” Farid said. “How can I get a domestic producer to help me make XYZ component. They’ll come to a lot of these small factories and say, ‘Can you bid this part? Here’s the CAD drawing, can you make it?’ And, unfortunately, the reality is, a lot of these shops will say, ‘In theory, we can make it, but we’re booked full’.”
A lot of these smaller companies, Farid noted, are not automated.
“What we’re seeing is once they get a couple of robots, they can start to say yes to some of those orders, so it helps them get more of that business,” he said.
How to automate quickly
Addressing the current tariff uncertainty isn’t simple, but Farid does have some advice for plants looking to scale their automation plans.
“Robotics isn’t one of those things you can indiscriminately add,” he said.
It requires management and maintenance.
His first piece of advice would be to add a strong internal robotics team. Failing that, hiring a trust source and having the capital to back it up would be his next piece of advice.
“If you’re going to go with a systems integrator, my expectation would be to budget about 50% more than what they’re going to quote you,” he said.
This is because change orders happen frequently. Problems arise over a year or two, leading to more expenses.
The third option is full-service automation, which he provides.
“It does sound a little bit self-serving, but the easiest way is through full-service automation.”
