AGV projects expanded rapidly alongside initiatives for advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence and smart factories. Experience across dozens of projects also revealed why some installations failed to reach completion. The article groups the recurring problems into commercial and technical issues.
Commercial issues
- Winning work at unsustainably low prices and competing on price alone.
- Giving publicity more weight than practical delivery.
- Focusing on brand reputation while overlooking innovation.
Technical issues
- Insufficient supplier engineering capability.
- Products that do not meet the required quality.
- Reliance on copied solutions without enough independent development.
- Accepting projects without a realistic analysis of requirements or effective communication.
