During the last several decades, many forward-thinking manufacturers have adopted factory automation for all that it promises—greater efficiency, consistency, productivity, and cost savings. In fact, if you walk through most modern manufacturing plants, you’ll see lines of machines performing a good majority of once-manual tasks, like molding plastic components or filling packages.

Such electro-mechanical automation has become a part of life on the plant floor. But even as manufacturers continue to want more value and new means of competitive differentiation, the truth is most have reached a point where automation is delivering fewer and fewer returns. We’ve picked all the low-hanging fruit—all the processes ripe for automation have been automated.

 …