When a robot pays for itself
Automation Payback
The payback period and five-year saving of a robot cell, from purchase and integration cost, shifts, labour cost and the hours a person is freed for other work.
What this tool does
A robot is a capital cost that replaces a running cost. The calculator adds purchase, integration and annual maintenance, then computes the labour it displaces from hours per day, days per year, loaded hourly cost and the share of a full-time position it covers. The result is the payback in months and the cumulative saving over five years, with a chart that shows the crossing point.
How to use it
- Enter the robot price, integration cost and yearly maintenance.
- Set how many hours a day and days a year the cell runs, and the loaded cost of the labour it replaces.
- Read the payback in months and the five-year net saving, and move the utilisation slider to see how quickly idle time kills the case.
Good to know
- Loaded labour cost includes wages, social charges, training and absence, usually thirty to fifty percent above the base wage.
- Robots rarely replace a whole position; they take the repetitive part and free the person for the rest. Use the share slider honestly.
- Quality gains, injuries avoided and throughput increases are real but not modelled here.
Read next
Reads that use this tool
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For twenty years the walking robot was a trade fair attraction. Now a dozen companies are building them by the hundred and a few are being paid for work. What changed is not the legs.
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The hand is the hard part
A robot can run, jump and carry a crate. Picking up a strawberry without crushing it is still a research problem, and it is the one standing between humanoids and most of the work they are sold for.
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Twenty years after a Stanford car crossed the Mojave alone, paying passengers ride without a driver in a growing list of cities. The technology stopped being the question. The unit economics started being it.
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