UR and MiR consolidated R&D services and headquarters in 2024. Supply: Common Robots
Financial uncertainty has taken a toll on the robotics business, together with main distributors. Teradyne Inc.’s robotics group laid off 10% of its international workforce this week. Teradyne owns Common Robots A/S and Cellular Industrial Robots ApS, main builders of collaborative robotic arms and autonomous cellular robots, respectively.
It’s unclear precisely what number of staff had been affected by the restructuring. Nonetheless, Teradyne Robotics says on its web site that it has 1,400+ staff worldwide. The ten% discount features a 6% layoff in Denmark, the place each Common Robots (UR) and Cellular Industrial Robots (MiR) are headquartered.
“The robotics business basically has been going by means of a tough patch,” Ujjwal Kumar, group president for Teradyne Robotics, informed The Robotic Report.
“UR declined 3% yr over yr, and MiR grew 1% yr over yr,” he mentioned. “We outperformed the market, which had double-digit declines.”
Demand for robotics didn’t meet expectations due to the post-COVID slowdown in capital, wars affecting commerce and labor, and uncertainty amongst producers, mentioned Kumar. “I’ve been within the industrial world for greater than 25 years, and I’ve by no means seen this kind of pullback in core low-mix, high-volume manufacturing,” he mentioned.
“Final yr was one in every of operations consolidation for UR and MiR, and we’ve improved the standard and price of our items and on-time supply for brand spanking new merchandise,” Kumar added. “Our playbook is to outperform the market, pushed by improvements, channel transformations, and new verticals.”
Teradyne stories ‘restructuring’ of gross sales, advertising and marketing, providers
In its earnings name for the fourth quarter of 2024, Teradyne acknowledged that its robotics enterprise was sluggish as compared with its core testing enterprise.
“The commercial automation market continued to be weak in This fall,” said the North Studying, Mass.-based firm. “In 2024, we mixed UR and MiR operations right into a unified robotics operations group.”
“Now in Q1 of 2025, we’re consolidating our go-to-market capabilities on the robotics degree to allow our greatest companions to promote the total UR and MiR product line and to serve our clients higher with a single customer-service group,” Teradyne mentioned. “This restructuring will increase our effectivity and reduces our robotics breakeven income from $440 million in 2024 to $365 million in 2025.”
The corporate mentioned that its complete robotics income was $365 million for 2024, with UR contributing $293 million and MiR $72 million.
Kumar mentioned that Teradyne is consolidating UR and MIR’s gross sales, advertising and marketing, and help groups after specializing in new merchandise previously yr.
“As much as 55% of MiR’s companions are additionally UR companions, and so is 55% of its income,” he defined. “Within the previous construction, we had an account supervisor for each calling on the identical OEMs [manufacturers], GSIs [global systems integrators], and distributors. We had a chance to remove some overlap, ability up customer support, and increase regional protection.”
“Providers had an identical overlap, with totally different product strains,” Kumar added. “By combining forces, we’ll have higher protection of each geography for tech help and restore providers below multiyear service contracts.”
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Common Robots strikes from new merchandise to new markets
Final yr, Teradyne mentioned it launched a report variety of new merchandise to develop its serviceable addressable market (SAM). They included the MiR1200 pallet jack with synthetic intelligence for pallet detection, cleanroom-rated robots for semiconductor manufacturing plus meals and beverage, and the MC600 cellular cobot.
Common Robots additionally elevated the payload capability of its UR20 and UR30 arms by means of software program updates. It continued to roll out its PolyScope X platform and started collaborating with NVIDIA on combining AI with its cobots. In the meantime, MiR Fleet Enterprise provided fleet administration for autonomous cellular robots (AMRs).
“We wanted a leaner industrial group to have continued give attention to new product launches and to have higher protection with giant accounts and OEMs,” mentioned Kumar. “Key verticals for us embody logistics and warehouse, in addition to semiconductors due to issues like Teradyne’s new relationship with ADI [Analog Devices Inc.]. We’re launching a give attention to meals and beverage and prescribed drugs.”
The MC600 is designed for dependable cellular manipulation, says MiR. Supply: Cellular Industrial Robots
Kumar nonetheless bullish on international progress
Whereas Teradyne expects slower to flat progress within the first half of 2025, Kumar was nonetheless optimistic about prospects for Common Robots and Cellular Industrial Robots.
In December, Common Robots opened its first manufacturing facility in China, with new fashions for that market, the UR7e and the UR12e.
“We imagine the Chinese language market is popping the nook,” famous Kumar. “We imagine that phase now values better-performing, high quality ecosystem-based choices, and we’re constructing on that speculation. We now have large progress plans.”
On the identical time, rising labor shortages in manufacturing, warehousing, agriculture, meals processing, and building ought to increase demand for automation in North America and Europe.
“We’re in talks with with main firms throughout the U.S.,” Kumar mentioned. “The superior robotics area — which is extra collaborative and for high- to medium-mix jobs — may assist the place industries must redeploy individuals repeatedly. These are precisely the sort of jobs the brand new generations of cobots and AMRs can step as much as assist.”
As commerce present season begins, Common Robots will proceed to exhibit with its UR+ ecosystem companions, as seen in its UR Collaborate occasion this week.
“We’re not pulling again on our presence at these occasions,” asserted Kumar. “Our progress focus is on new product launches, and we’ll want to speak about new functions and options with clients.”
“Cellular manipulation is an incremental progress driver,” he mentioned. “We launched two merchandise final yr, and we’re in the entire identical human-scale functions as humanoid robots however with extra succesful, reasonably priced cellular cobots.”
“We’ll hold bringing in additional AI-based options to increase the applying area,” Kumar mentioned. “2025 will probably be a pivotal yr for us within the superior robotics business.”
Editor’s observe: Steve Crowe contributed to this text.
