As autonomous technology rapidly matures and adoption continues to accelerate, modern manufacturing and warehousing facilities are rethinking how they approach their innovation initiatives. The days of siloed decision-making or one-off pilot programs are quickly being replaced by structured, strategically managed efforts. Enter the Automation Team—a dedicated group of internal stakeholders tasked with scaling automation success from concept through deployment and beyond.
Forward-thinking companies are establishing internal Automation Teams to lead their innovative transformation. These cross-functional teams are responsible for identifying automation opportunities, assessing new technologies, overseeing implementation, and continuously evaluating performance and ROI.
By creating a centralized team, these companies can ensure that automation efforts align with business objectives, meet safety and efficiency standards, and are deployed consistently across facilities.
Core responsibilities often include:
These teams often include operations leaders, engineering, safety managers, IT, and logistics personnel—each bringing a different perspective to maximize impact.
While centralized Automation Teams provide strategic oversight, their success hinges on the presence of site-level champions—individuals on the ground who advocate cross-departmentally for automation and act as the key point of contact for vendors.
Site champions are typically highly engaged individuals within the facility—trusted team members who understand operations intimately and are invested in long-term autonomous success. They play a vital role in translating high-level strategy into practical execution.
A strong site champion will:
By partnering closely with experienced automation vendors, site champions also help ensure timely support, successful training, and issue resolution.
Automation is no longer an experiment—it is a strategic imperative. Modern manufacturing and warehousing facilities that treat it as such are setting themselves up for long-term efficiency, scalability, and competitiveness. By assembling dedicated Automation Teams and empowering strong site champions, companies can create the structure and momentum needed to deploy autonomous solutions with confidence and consistency.
Automation works best when there’s ownership. Teams with clearly defined roles, site-level advocacy, and alignment across departments, are not only more successful at deploying autonomous solutions—they’re also more adaptable as technologies evolve and demands quickly shift.
Whether you’re launching your first automation project or scaling autonomous solutions across multiple sites, having the right people in place is the key to success. Look for your internal champions and start assembling a cross-functional team that’s ready to take your facility into the future. The opportunities have just begun, and the possibilities are limitless.