Five Things to Consider Before Adding CNC Automation
Simon Schneider 08.01.2025
Every automation decision is more informed, strategic, and straightforward with Okuma Factory Automation as your partner and provider.
CNC automation moves fast. It hustles. All systems do, whether you’re using a new bar feeder, your tenth cobot, or a trusted automatic pallet changer that’s seen a few different machine-tool pairings over its time. Because of automation, increasing productivity is as easy as ever. Unattended loading and unloading operations maintain a consistently impressive pace, even when handling heavy parts, ensuring continuous workflows and shorter lead times. And from start to finish, from raw materials to smooth surfaces, part production speeds are higher than they’ve ever been before.
Automation adoption moves even faster, for two reasons:
- Manufacturing production continues to grow; in April 2025, U.S. manufacturing output increased 1.2% year-on-year, highlighting greater demand for automotive components, aerospace parts, computer and electronic elements, and fabricated metal products.1
- By 2030, the manufacturing sector could face a shortage of 1.9 million skilled workers.2 Retirement is the biggest hurdle here — workers with irreplaceable knowledge and experience are leaving the industry faster than the next generation can be trained. We’re starting to see this now. By the end of 2025, 22% of “existing skilled manufacturing workers will be retiring.”3
Automation is the way forward. It’s exciting, a necessity, a solution to current challenges that’s becoming more affordable and accessible for jobs and companies of all sizes. It’s how shops become more successful today — and how they stay successful in the future. So, to manage the rising influx of orders (which often have strict timelines) against a steadily shrinking workforce, manufacturing enterprises and job shops are integrating automation into their processes quickly.
But speed doesn’t matter unless you're moving in the right direction.
Without careful consideration for automation systems themselves — and for how, when, and where each fit into your operations best — productivity, efficiency, and returns are limited.
At Okuma Factory Automation, we turn these potential limits into business breakthroughs with five things to consider before automating:
START WITH AN AUTOMATION PLAN
We believe in automation for all shops, all jobs, and all budgets. We also believe that you shouldn’t spec parts without an automation strategy in place — that’s like restoring a car without all the right parts or fishing without bait. Both happen, but the outcomes are usually less than favorable.
When shops spec parts before they know how they’ll make them and how automation can help produce them at scale, they often leverage the wrong system at the wrong time, or underestimate the resources needed for the job. But with an automation plan, you can define specific goals beforehand. You can integrate automation where it will have the biggest, fastest impact and maximum ROI. You can match system features and capabilities to real needs. You can avoid investing in a solution that simply isn’t right.
A successful automation plan aligns with your production strategy, considers your unique challenges, and makes an immediate difference in your day-to-day operations. It’s not about adopting new technology quickly — it’s about adopting the right systems at the right time for the right reasons. Getting started is simple; at Okuma Factory Automation, we’ll make the plan with you and then carry out each step.
LEVERAGE OKUMA FACTORY AUTOMATION ENGINEERING SERVICES
Like machine tools and automation systems, or CAD and CAM software, an automation plan pairs perfectly with an audit from our experts and engineers at Okuma Factory Automation. It’s how we extract information about your business goals, capacities, and constraints first to understand your automation needs and then advise or prescribe specific solutions. Do you need to shorten setup times? Do you have unplanned downtime in a current workflow? What parts or jobs do you run most often? Which returns are you expecting in the first year after an investment? How does your material flow? How long do you want to run unattended?
Using an approach that’s equal parts consultative and engineering-centric, we ask questions, identify pain points, run numbers, then tell you how, which, and where automation fits best into your operations. We’ll customize any hardware and software you need. If it means creating an entirely new solution, we’ll do that too.
Consulting
This process is done best in person. We’ll send members of our team to your shop to learn more about what you do, and what we can do for you. Firsthand observation of shop floor realities means we can assess workflows and equipment conditions in real time and provide on-the-spot adjustments. We can also uncover hidden inefficiencies and missed automation opportunities as we walk your floor and hear from your operators, engineers, and other stakeholders. Seeing your facility, your layout, and observing your current process are the most effective ways to determine the right solutions.
Engineering
We’ll use our consultation findings, your non-negotiables, and performance opportunities to recommend or create solutions that are precise, realistic, and without assumptions. In doing so, we’ll consider your machines, budget, existing contracts, and your ambition to earn new business. Sometimes, you might need two plug-and-play robot loaders or a cost-effective bar feeder to add the levels of efficiency and productivity needed in your processes. Other times, a connected ecosystem of automatic pallet changers, gantry loaders, robotic arms, and new automation systems creates the most value. And occasionally, your machines might have automation features or capabilities that go unused until greater awareness is brought to them.
From consultation to custom engineering, installation, integration, and innovation, Okuma Factory Automation is your single source for automation solutions that fit your business, not the other way around.
CONSIDER YOUR PHYSICAL SHOP ENVIRONMENT AND HOW AUTOMATION CAN FIT YOUR FLOOR
“Fitting your business” is twofold. Not only should you consider the automation capabilities that are right for your operations, but you should also analyze the size of every automation system you wish to implement.
When machines, people, forklifts, staging areas, and workstations compete for the same space, it can be difficult to imagine the addition of something new. Instead of working around workflow inefficiencies, we’ll help you work through them. By visiting your site and walking your floor(s), we can see your current flow of parts, machine layouts, and floor space opportunities. From there, part of your automation plan will include recommendations to improve material flow, consider creative machining arrangements to degrease in-transit times, or leverage compact solutions, like our Okuma Robot Loaders, which only require around nine feet of working space.
We’ll optimize every inch of your floor so that space doesn’t limit the types of jobs you can take on, or your ability to bring automation into your workflow. Addressing space constraints early saves time and costs later!
UNDERSTAND YOUR PART PROCESS
Because automation is an investment, you want it where it delivers the highest returns; you want it where it makes the most sense. And when you fully understand your part process — prep, setups, loading, cycle times, tool changes, unloading — you can identify where it needs to go.
If your shop makes 100,000 of the same part in a single run, adding automation to this process can reduce cycle times and complete the order faster, which maximizes machine utilization and keeps your shops on schedule (or ahead of it). One such solution is an Okuma Gantry Loader, an efficient, space-saving automation system that loads metal stock material into your machine for processing and then unloads the finished parts.
For low-volume, high-mix operations, we may recommend an Okuma Robot Loader that helps your operators tend to more machines at a time, or an automated tool management system for faster tool access, greater consistency, and shorter lead times. And based on the features of your parts, other automation solutions — integrated unloaders, coolant flushing to keep the work envelope clean, high-pressure systems to help break chips, air blow for consistent loading and part seating or integrated gauging with live machine feedback — can help protect the cutting environment and long-term health of your machines.
For enterprise manufacturers and job shops alike, Okuma Factory Automation can help you avoid mismatches and trial and error for immediate benefits and predictable returns on investment.
BRING OKUMA IN EARLY
It’s never too early. And it’s never too late. For leaders ready to elevate their processes, Okuma Factory Automation can turn operational challenges into standard or customized solutions with a human-first approach. We make sure you understand the full scope of our automation offerings and your automation plan: the software and hardware, available training, service options, integration, and 24/7/365 support. If you require a new bar feeder, ten robot systems, or a high-capacity automatic pallet changer that can pair with your different machine tools, we’re your one-stop shop for all of it, plus smarter decisions, fewer roadblocks, and the right solution at the right time. Possibilities are engineered by Okuma Factory Automation.
BONUS: FIND YOUR AUTOMATION CHAMPION
This is the person within your organization who’s interested in automation, who thinks about it when they’re off the clock, who has always had a love for tinkering. They’re interested in its benefits, related training opportunities, and resolving workflow challenges. They can also serve as our direct channel of communication as your business considers adding automation, as we build your automation plan, and as we’re with you every step of the way on your automation journey.
References
1Trading Economics. “United States Manufacturing Production.” Accessed 6 June 2025. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/manufacturing-production.
2Magill, Kate. “Manufacturing could be short 1.9M workers if the talent gap isn’t fixed.” Supply Chain Dive. 16 April 2024. https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/manufacturing-labor-shortage-2033-deloitte-mi-report-2024/713326/.
3Pucciarelli, Michael S. “Labor Shortages in the Manufacturing Sector.” Hill, Barth & King LLC. 15 November 2022. https://hbkcpa.com/insights/labor-shortages-in-the-manufacturing-sector/.
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