Companies today have limited capital budgets, and when they do have it, they search for the highest impact opportunities. Formic’s solution is a way to automate purely out of operating budgets (OpEx) - paying a monthly rate for a specified output (for example, $4.5K a month to move 10 boxes per minute onto a pallet). Formic handles all scoping, design, deployment, training, monitoring, and maintenance. Our pricing is all-inclusive.
There is zero upfront cost until a system is on your floor working as promised, and instead, only one low rate. Results and savings are immediate on day 1.
Formic has two pricing models:
Under both pricing models, customers pay nothing until a system is on their floor functioning as promised.
For systems within the Formic palletizing portfolio, regardless of whether pricing is month to month or annual, it includes:
Formic owns and supports the equipment. As a part of our full-service offering, Formic handles everything - from equipment installation and operator training to all predictive and reactive maintenance necessary to maximize uptime at no additional cost to you.
Formic is the only provider of robotics that contractually agrees to performance. This means, unlike leasing companies, Formic has “skin in the game”. We use our software to design the right robot for the job, to manage and deploy it, and to manage, upgrade and maintain it after it’s deployed (including through programs like our “Formic Flex” offering).
Equipment leases typically are just a way to finance the cost of hardware. They do not include engineering studies, performance commitments, equipment reprogramming, or maintenance. Formic’s engineering capabilities work to make it easy and risk-free for you to adopt robotics.
Formic is able to offer a cost-effective and affordable Raas offering via:
We support a variety of applications in consumer good manufacturing, packaging, and logistics, with a focus on palletizing (Formic STACK) and case packing (Formic PACK).
We have public examples on our website under Resources / Customer Stories (here)
Your team will be fully trained to use the robot (no prior experience necessary), but Formic will be responsible for everything else. Your team is expected to follow the correct operating procedures. You do not need to have in-house engineering or robotics capabilities, as we do everything in our power to build “turn-key” systems.
We have 24/7 monitoring and maintenance (bilingual) to support your floor operators with whatever questions they may have about system usage.
In terms of physical infrastructure, our customers are responsible for providing power, compressed air and network connections as necessary for the robot.
Contracts are either month-to-month (with a 3 month minimum requirement) for select systems, or customers can choose to lock in a multi-year agreement for discounts. In both cases, the price is a flat monthly rate.
If any of our robots ever has a problem, simply contact your Formic representative (or dial our 24/7 support line technical support line) and someone will assist you immediately.
All of our systems are backed by Formic’s committed Service Level Agreement in each contract (for example 5 parts per minute, with 95% availability). We have technicians, field engineers & partners around the country and spare parts in stock that we dispatch in case of any unplanned issues. We also have IoT software that is deployed on each system which allows us to monitor and remotely resolve issues. If we fall short of our SLA commitment we provide you with compensation and credits to make you whole.
Most importantly, we are the only robotics provider that stands behind our performance commitments, service levels and has an incentive to get your robots back up-and-running and no additional cost to you. That means, if there is ever a problem, we are on the same side.
Scoping to deployment can occur in as little as 4 weeks. The actual time depends on your application, how quickly we can gather the information we need, and the lead time for obtaining all the components needed for the system.
If a customer would like to add or subtract certain SKUs that are within the capability and programming of the existing system, we will add or remove those as a part of our single and all-inclusive price.
To address deeper changes, we generally offer one free programming addition per year (sometimes more), barring any new hardware. In the event that new hardware is needed, we can usually work with you in one of three ways: 1) Increase the contract term to offset the additional system cost; 2) Increase the billing rate for the remainder of the contract; or 3) Pass through the additional cost in one single payment.
You should consult with your accounting and tax advisors, but based on the current ASC definitions and standards, many of Formic’s customers consider our systems to be an operational expense that is expensed as it is incurred or accrued (similar to paying for a janitorial service), and not listed on their balance sheet as an asset. As such they take the position that there are no depreciation expenses, accrued depreciation, operating expense contra account, or capital liabilities on their balance sheet. We offer a detailed Whitepaper on this topic, here.
Automating with Formic, the only question manufacturers need to ask themselves is: what repetitive manual tasks can be automated in my facility right now?
