Menu
By Ty Findley, Co-Founder & General Partner, and Colleen Konetzke, Principal
Skilled manufacturing labor is in short supply – and that supply is only dwindling. Nearly 50% of manufacturers say they have turned down work due to lack of labor, and in 2023, 10,000 baby boomers retired every day. Between 2024 and 2033, the net need for new employees in manufacturing could approach 3.8M, with about half of these open jobs (1.9M) potentially going unfilled if manufacturers are not able to address the skills gap (and the applicant gap). This is compounded by the recent manufacturing boom in the US, driven by legislation such as the CHIPS Act, the IIJA, and the IRA. Manufacturers need automation to flatten the detrimental effects of the skilled labor shortage and find reliable, consistent solutions via robotics and automation. Automating manual, repetitive, and dangerous activities can level up the current workforce.
Given labor challenges and all the benefits automation can provide, why hasn’t adoption taken off? At present, it is difficult for manufacturing and logistics organizations to embrace automation because of an overabundance of options and an underabundance of indexing, analysis, and guidance. Said differently, unless you are like us regularly visiting the conference circuit of ProMat, MODEX, IMTS, and other events that attract those who are entrenched in this topic, there is a high likelihood a corporation finds the industrial automation market opaque and unapproachable to even get started. Finding and adopting the right automation solution can be overwhelming and costly, making implementing automation solutions inaccessible to those who need it most, the manufacturers and warehouse operators struggling to find reliable labor.
Even if a manufacturer can afford the upfront capital expense of a large palletizer (as one example), it’s incredibly challenging to understand whether the investment will be worth it both in the short term buying cycle and in the longer term, multi-year ROI calculation that must pencil out for the finance teams. Manufacturers expect the investment to work right away and be a “silver bullet,” when in reality, change management (operationally and culturally) and ongoing iteration and maintenance are significant and under-invested in. Automation is a journey, and identifying and implementing the technology is not simple , but it will be critical to making modern-day manufacturing successful. At Ironspring Ventures, we see an incredible opportunity to support the automation adoption process, and Reshape Automation is doing just that. We were thrilled to lead Reshape’s $5M seed round, with participation from Haystack, Supply Chain Ventures, Remus Capital, Expansion VC, and prominent angel investors including Amar Hanspal (former co-CEO of Autodesk), with continued support from existing investors Schematic Ventures and Bee Partners.
With its comprehensive Reshape Industrial Automation Hub, Reshape removes barriers to adoption. The company’s AI-powered platform assists manufacturers and warehouse operators end-to-end (from discovery to deployment), taking a lot of the complexity out of adopting automation solutions. With the Hub, a customer can diagnose, design, procure, and manage the adoption of automation equipment and services in one place that is transparent and auditable for all parties (internal and external) engaged in a project. The Industrial Automation Hub has four parts: Reshape Insights, Reshape Planner, Reshape Market, and Reshape Services.
Driving our enthusiasm about and conviction in Reshape was our excitement around the team. Reshape co-founders CEO Juan Aparicio and CTO Carlos Vanegas bring an incredible blend of industrial automation industry and technology experience to grow and execute on their vision. Juan is a 10-year veteran of Siemen’s robotics team as the former Head of Robotics & AI Research and has held multiple senior product management roles across Rapid Robotics and Ready Robotics; Carlos has extensive software engineering and CTO experience including founding Synthicity (which he sold to Autodesk in 2015) and expansive roles at Bright Machines and Rapid Robotics. These leaders have seen the pain of automation adoption first-hand and are uniquely capable of creating a game changing solution given how close to the problem they have been and their understanding of the challenges and opportunities involved across stakeholders. On top of that, their passion for robotics and automation and the promise they hold for improving how businesses and labor operate is palpable (and contagious).
As investors who have invested in industrial automation for over a decade, Reshape Automation is the first company to our knowledge to build an end-to-end support hub that is hardware agnostic for industrial automation deployment. Armed with an exceptional team and sophisticated AI-based tooling, we’re excited to support Reshape as they transform how industrial automation is adopted.
Visit the Reshape Automation website: www.reshapeautomation.com
Read Reshape Automation’s funding announcement
