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When automation is mentioned in the context of job shops or small companies there may be a number of perceived obstacles: the technology itself can be intimidating, the assumed cost and integration required to incorporate automation into a shop’s workflow and the training needed to run the tech are just a few. And many shop owners just don’t know where to start. Consulting firm McKinsey has released a number of studies on industrial automation and found that while 94 percent said digital solutions will be an important part of their future automation efforts, 61 percent said lack of experience with automation was their primary barrier to adoption. McKinsey also found that 62 percent of respondents sought an automation provider who could offer full-service models for implementation and support. 

Enter , a machine-tool importer and engineering services provider that offers a variety of automation solutions to its customers, from simple automation like tool changers up to fully integrated robots and cobots for automated cells linking multiple machines and technologies. With more than 300 applications and machine experts and engineers at locations across North America, Methods works closely with manufacturers from presale through installation and production to ensure that its customers are taking full advantage of all the technology offers.  

Small shops, big results: breaking down automation barriers

Jon Star, director of marketing and communications at Methods Machine Tools in the Boston area, believes we are at an interesting time in manufacturing. “There are a lot of converging forces and themes and I call it with a lot of disruption in manufacturing today,” Star said. “There’s the rate of change in technology, the labor shortages and aging-out of existing manufacturing employees. And companies have higher pressure than ever to perform, particularly small, non-OEM businesses that are dealing with a higher cost of running their businesses.”

Star continued explaining the holistic way he looks at approaching automation. “Automation certainly isn’t new to manufacturing, but with each passing quarter, the pressure is there for business owners to ask how they can embrace it,” he said. “They ask where to start and need help looking at it from the perspective of their entire business and not just at the application level. That’s where Methods tries to deliver for our customers, helping them drive the most value in and out of their businesses and still meeting or exceeding their customers’ expectations.” 

Nick and Skylar Squillace were just the right business owners to embrace this way of thinking and automation in their business. Finding the right partner who provides the machines and automation solutions and can instill a level of confidence and comfort in the technology and offer ongoing training and support, is not automatic. So when the founders of decided to pursue opening a job shop, they knew finding the right supplier who was a true partner would be crucial to their success.

The brothers started their manufacturing careers during college at a small machine shop in the motorsports world. “There was a machine in the corner that no one had touched, and it still had the wrapping on it and we told our boss we needed to use that machine for the parts we were building at that time for a race car,” Skylar said. “I picked up the manual and we both started reading it and figured out how to run it from that and YouTube videos.”

Fast forward to 2019, with both brothers working on motorsports teams, when they started a small job shop in Nick’s garage. Nick went full time in 2022 while Skylar is still working in motorsports and  working part-time at the shop with his brother, with plans to eventually go full- time. Last summer, they hired their first full-time employee.

The automation imperative: meeting industry challenges head on

When they decided to pursue building a business from scratch, they knew they wanted to do it right the first time, and that meant buying the right equipment and technology that would serve them immediately and still allow them to grow their capacity down the road. Their first machine in Nick’s garage was a T14iA FANUC RoboDrill, a 3-axis vertical CNC machine that they still operate every day in their business. Nick said they wanted to embrace the latest technology.

“At the time, the was relatively new and there weren’t a ton of people using it yet,” Nick continued. They reached out to Methods and had a sales engineer calling on them. “We were asking about it on forums and our sales engineer was taking us to different companies that had the machines just so we could see what it did for them in their business. We decided we were probably going to buy more equipment (down the road) with automation than without, and long term knew that was how we would amplify what we got done.”

Zachary Spencer, director of engineered solutions at Methods, said he thinks of the Plus K60 systems as a pallet and tool manager for a small vertical mill. “It takes a lot of the technology from the past with horizontal machining centers, where you have big tombstones, and it shrinks it down to a smaller spindle workspace that allows for the automatic pallet loading and tool management for that type of machine instead.”

Star said the genesis of this platform was for shops running high-volume or high-mix/high-volume and offering them a platform to leverage the speed and precision of the RoboDrill with a very user-friendly interface and system for parts and tooling management, to free them up to focus on more strategic parts of their business.

Embracing technology from day one

Star describes Nick and Skylar as “automation natives.” Much like millennials are considered the first “digital natives” because they grew up immersed in the internet and connectivity that those born before them had to adapt to, the Squillaces have embraced automation from the founding of their business. 

When automation became more prevalent, shop owners and employees initially thought they may be replacing workers with robots or machines — but that has not been the case. “I’ve never been involved in a discussion where a company is trying to replace an operator with a robot, it’s always that they can’t hire enough people to do every-day tasks so they can replace the monotonous loading and unloading of parts with a robot so operators can focus on part inspection and programming the next parts that will run on the machines,” Spencer said.

We delivered this pretty massive amount of parts and the customer thought we were some machine shop with 100 people and we’re a two-man shop!

NS Precision, located in Cornelius, North Carolina, does some higher volume production parts, but also has a lot of high-mix, lower volume parts they run for customers in the aerospace, defense and motorsports industries. “During an 8-hour workday we’re doing a lot of set up and essentially dialing in the parts. Once we get parts that pass our quality inspection we set up the automation cell, load it up and go home,” Nick said. “We can only get so much done during an 8-hour day so that was a big reason for us to go with the Plus K60. We can do the heavy lifting so to speak during the day and let the machine run at night. In the past year we’ve pretty much done that every night.” 

Nick said they average about 100 hours a week of automated production, and they’ve come up with some innovative ways to run parts sequentially.

Skylar recounted one order where the shop produced 153 unique part numbers in days, in quantities of five to 24 of each part, by running three machines around the clock. “The Methods Plus K60 probably did half of that order and the other half was split among two people operating two other machines, so you can see how much volume we are able to run through that machine during a 250-hour continuous cycle, or almost two full weeks of active machining time. We delivered this pretty massive amount of parts and the customer thought we were some machine shop with 100 people and we’re a two-man shop!” 

And NS Precision is winning jobs because of their lights-out automation. Skylar shared one example of this: “Another company is quoting six to eight weeks because they’re only quoting eight hours a day, no weekends, five days a week. We’re 16-hour days and an additional eight days a month in that same period,” due to their ability to run full production unmanned. This advantage allows them to offer customers shorter lead times and is helping them grow their business.

The right solutions for the right customers

Success isn’t guaranteed just because a shop installs some automation; it must be the right solution for the applications they are running. Spencer said they ask a lot of questions to learn the pain points customers are having and they find common questions and problems over and over that drive them to the right solution or system to recommend. 

“For NS Precision, they are changing over more frequently so a more standardized set up that allows for quick changeover time and high spindle utilization was a requirement for them,” Spencer continued. “When we work with someone like an automotive OEM customer, they need equipment that runs one, two, or three million of the same part every year and they don’t ever want to change it. That leads to a very different type of solution where they can’t handle a 1-minute load/unload cycle — it has to be 1-2 seconds, maximum. 

“Other considerations include how they are doing maintenance — does each operator maintain their own machine or is it a regular cycle for the shop? What about probing, tool checks, tooling vendors? What do they have now and use for chip and coolant management? Although those don’t sound like automation questions because it’s machine-tool focused, all of these factors go into whether the automation is going to be successful or not. If you don’t have tools that are going to last a whole shift, but you have three day’s worth of parts on an infeed conveyor, that won’t do you much good! So these are the types of questions I get into every day when I talk with customers about automation cells.”

Grow your business without growing headcount

Star said they do an in-depth ROI analysis with customers. “If you were making this on a RoboDrill in a standard three-axis set up, what does that dollar figure look like for machine cost, hours, uptime and revenue? Now let’s transpose that with automation and see what the new revenue opportunity looks like. That goes for the people side of the business, too. With automation, they can spend more time on application and engineering work and let the machine do what it’s built to do,” he continued. “We look to help them maximize their people so an operator who might be moving materials or punching details into a control could be resourced to more strategic or complex matters in their business. If you’re spending fewer hours on engineering and programming your productivity rate is being lost from the human capital side and you’re not maximizing their talent and potential.”

“NS Precision is a great example of how automation can help a business because they are a two- or three- person shop. Other small shop owners may be thinking that they’re too small for automation because they can manage the machine. If you’re that small, you’re the operator and owner, and automation can help you spend more time just being the owner and bringing in business. Similar to how small shops may view five-axis machining, thinking a one-person shop can’t really get into something that complex, we help them understand it really is more profitable for them in the long run because they can run hundreds of hours consecutively and grow the business.”

Methods looks at automation as a turnkey, custom solution for their customers. “We look at it from a holistic sense and aren’t just an integrator who will build the cell for you,” Star stated. “Our operation runs the full gamut from automating small tasks to full automation cells for companies with one employee or thousands.” 

For shop owners considering what automation might do for them, they need to think about the targets they want to achieve each day, week, month, or year, and find a partner that will run the scenarios with them. Star said, “With the cost of doing business continuing to rise, tries to really deliver for our customers by helping them look at things from a total business perspective and not just at the application level. We win when we can help them drive a more profitable and healthier business.”