Vickers Engineering Thrives: FANUC Automation Fuels Competitive Edge

For over 50 years, Vickers Engineering has been a leading producer of high-quality precision parts for the automotive industry. After decades of increasing growth, in 2006 Vickers management realized that automation would be necessary to maintain a competitive edge.
According to Jeff Vickers, Vice President of Engineering Sales, the company was very fortunate to embrace automation early on. “That first automation project was really done out of necessity because the task was too physically demanding for a person to do.”
Initially, Vickers’ management was intimidated by the automation - they didn’t know how to maintain or program it, and they were not sure how their employees would react. However, once the FANUC robot arrived, their concerns quickly vanished due to its ease of use and reliable operation. Most importantly, the employees were not at all threatened by the automation and actually fought over who got to run the cell.
After that first robot implementation, Vickers used industrial robots due to their speed and ability to perform numerous repetitive operations - day in and day out - 24 hours a day, five days a week for several years.