Four Capabilities That Drive Increased ROI for Automated Material Testing

The “great resignation” in the wake of COVID created an acute talent shortage for manufacturers, and testing operations are no exception. Based on estimates that 2.1 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2030, labor shortages are not just a temporary issue. Hiring and retaining talent will be difficult for the foreseeable future, and long-term operational resilience will necessitate reducing dependence on labor. Broadly, manufacturers are expected to transition toward reliance on fewer, more highly skilled employees.

In this context, automation will play a critical role in reducing material testing processes’ dependence on specific technicians with narrow skill sets. In one case, ZwickRoell worked with a steel tensile testing client who illustrated this imperative perfectly. For years, their process depended on a single employee with the strength needed to hold large samples of steel in place as tests were conducted. When he retired, no other technicians on staff were willing or able to perform the same task. In this case, employing an automated solution was critical to not just boosting throughput, but ensuring that operations could continue without the need to staff strong individuals willing to manually handle large pieces of steel!

Greater difficulty hiring and retaining talent will also exacerbate the challenges associated with switching over and scaling up different varieties of testing processes. Human technicians must be trained for each new type of test they perform. The need for training can create delays when switching over to a new type of test. Furthermore, difficulty retaining talent will drive challenges for retaining organizational knowledge, even as new hires inflate training costs and create further delays. Testing processes that are heavily reliant on manual labor also create additional barriers to scalability—any need for additional throughput will also require new hires.

A challenging labor market also makes it more difficult to ensure quality testing results. In general, it may take at least a year upon hiring a new testing technician to develop their skills and calibrate results to establish a reasonable standard of operator influence. Reducing human impact on testing results is always a valuable benefit of automation, especially so in an environment where retaining the same technicians for long periods will be challenging.

By dramatically reducing operator influence on the testing process, automated testing solutions can effectively function as “robot technicians” who deliver reliable, repeatable results and will never need retraining.

For many materials and component testing operations, predicting future testing needs is extraordinarily difficult. Technology is changing fast, materials are advancing rapidly, and new products can drive the need to scale up new testing processes almost overnight.

Flexible automated testing solutions provide the ultimate answer to uncertainty. For example, ZwickRoell’s solutions can be adapted with different levels of automation over time. A system that is deployed at one scale can be rapidly expanded through, for example, the addition of a fully automated specimen handling system. With the ability to add automated capabilities over time “a la carte,” materials and component testing operations can closely align capital expenditures to current operational needs, avoiding unnecessary expenses while retaining the ability to scale up quickly as needed.