Industrial automation giant Rockwell Automation announced yesterday during Automation Fair, it will build a new advanced automation manufacturing facility on a greenfield site in Southeastern Wisconsin, U.S. Rockwell Automation’s flagship event, is underway this week in Chicago, and our journalist Abigail Saltmarsh is on-site reporting for DirectIndustry.
Speaking at Automation Fair 2025, in Chicago, which runs until Thursday, CEO Blake Moret said the project is the next step in the company’s previously announced $2 billion investment in plants, digital infrastructure and talent.
“We are going to be building this from the ground up to be able to orchestrate all the technology and capabilities of our people together and to take us to a new level of customer service and performance,” he said.
In his keynote, delivered to an audience of over 10,000, Mr. Moret emphasized the event’s focus on moving from automation to autonomy. He said such a decision demanded “a different way of thinking.”
“In the past, there have been 100 reasons why we might have made a different decision, but we are placing the bet in our capabilities on our home field and we are going to bring our customers along on that journey as we combine technology and expertise.”
The Latest Technologies
The new facility encompasses more than one million square feet of manufacturing and warehouse space. It could potentially become Rockwell’s largest manufacturing campus. The site will integrate Rockwell’s latest production technologies, including AI and analytics tools, to increase efficiency and precision.
It will be equipped with advanced automation, robotics, and digital systems, and have the flexibility to scale operations and provide the workforce with access to advanced training.
Bob Buttermore, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Rockwell Automation, said the hope was to see the Southeastern Wisconsin facility operational by the end of 2028.
“The new factory will have the latest and greatest technology,” he stressed. “Autonomous operations will continue to develop over the next few years, so as we develop things now – whether that’s what we are doing in AI or expanding our capabilities regarding AMRs – we will integrate them into the new facility. “We will have that technology right from the beginning.”
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Future Learning
Mr. Moret said the key to the future is about adapting and learning.
“We need to learn that systems can be even more performant along their lifecycle, past the first day of their commission, and that is a different paradigm from what most of us have grown up with. “Learning systems, learning organizations, technology that allows us to do those things, are going to be critically important in sorting out the winners and the losers over the coming years,” he observed.
Moret was very excited about this new facility:
“We are putting our money where our mouth is. And we are placing the bet thateven in a place with relatively high labor costs, we can compete and win against anybody in the world with the thoughtful application of technology.”
He concluded stating that their journey from automation to autonomy is all about “adapting and learning.”
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