How to Choose an Automation Equipment Manufacturer in 2026 — 7 Criteria to Fix Before You Compare Quotes

We have narrowed it down to three automation equipment manufacturers, so now it is just price. The moment that sentence is spoken, the selection has usually already gone wrong. Three quotations almost never cover the same scope. Behind the same phrase “a complete automation system” you will find a company that supplies only mechanics, one that carries electrical design and control software as well, and one that also takes on installation and commissioning. This article sorts automation equipment manufacturers into four types and sets out the seven criteria you should fix before you line up prices.

Why comparing automation equipment manufacturers collapses into a price contest

First, why does the decision end up being made on price alone? Skip this and the seven criteria below will look like a checklist rather than a method.

The word “manufacturer” covers three different kinds of company

When you go looking for an automation equipment manufacturer, the companies that actually reach your shortlist are fundamentally different animals. There is the company that sells its own branded machines as products, the company that combines robots and controllers made by others into a working system, and the company that buys equipment and resells it. All three are called “manufacturers”.

The problem is that all three respond to the same enquiry by quoting the scope they are good at. The machine builder quotes against its standard model, the integrator quotes a design built around your process, and the dealer quotes from equipment list prices. Line the numbers up and it looks like a comparison, but what you are comparing is a difference in scope, not a difference in capability.

The same structure runs through automation quotations in general, and the discipline of aligning scope before aligning numbers is covered in comparing automation quotations. This article deals with the step before that, namely which companies belong on the list in the first place.

Automation investment is growing, and so is the difficulty of choosing

According to World Robotics 2025, published by the International Federation of Robotics in September 2025, 542,000 industrial robots were installed worldwide in 2024, roughly double the figure of ten years earlier. The operational stock reached 4,664,000 units, up 9% year on year. Asia accounted for 74% of new installations in 2024, Europe for 16% and the Americas for 9%. Installations in 2025 were forecast to rise 6% to 575,000 units, and to pass 700,000 units by 2028. The market value of installations reached an all-time high of US$16.7 billion.

North American figures point the same way. In the full-year 2025 tally published by the Association for Advancing Automation in February 2026, companies in North America ordered 36,766 industrial robots worth US$2.25 billion, a 6.6% rise in units and a 10.1% rise in revenue. Collaborative robots accounted for 7,212 units and US$241 million of that, or 19.6% of units and 10.7% of revenue. Growth was driven by general industry rather than automotive.

Rising numbers mean more candidate suppliers. At the same time, automation spreading beyond automotive means companies with no experience of your process will respond to your enquiry. Selection has become harder because the market is expanding, not because it is shrinking.

What robot density really tells a buyer

In the robot density statistics published by the International Federation of Robotics in April 2026, the global average for 2024 was 132 robots per 10,000 employees. Korea led with 1,220, followed by Singapore with 818, Germany with 449, Japan with 446 and the United States with 307. By region, Western Europe stood at 267, North America at 204 and Asia at 131.

These figures are usually read as an adoption index, but for a buyer they carry a second meaning. Where density is high, it is not only machine builders that are numerous. The companies that maintain the machines, the companies that stock the parts and the mechanisms that train engineers have all thickened at the same time. Where density is low, you can buy the machine but there may be nobody nearby to look after it. Choosing an automation equipment manufacturer is not the act of choosing a machine. It is the act of choosing a partner for the next ten years.

Automation equipment manufacturers fall into four types

Before you list candidates, decide which type each company belongs to. The purpose is not to rank them but to make sure you only compare like with like.

Type 1 Machine builders that sell their own products

Companies that sell process-specific machines as catalogue products, such as filling machines, packaging machines, press-fit machines or washing machines. They have a catalogue, a standard specification, and the same model running in several factories.

Their strength is that every unit already in the field has had its faults ironed out. Commissioning is repeatable and spare parts can be ordered by part number. Their weakness is anything that falls outside their standard. If your workpiece has an unusual shape, or the handover to the neighbouring process has a quirk, you will get a proposal that forces your process onto their standard machine.

Type 2 System integrators and engineering companies

Companies that procure robots, controllers, cameras and conveying equipment from others and build them into a system that fits your process.

Their strength is that they design around your process and can choose which brands to use. Their weakness is that the result depends heavily on the individual engineer assigned, and that faults arising from the combination of devices can end up with unclear ownership. How to divide scope when ordering from this type is covered in the ordering guide for FA system integration.

Type 3 Trading companies and dealers

Distributors for robot and control equipment makers. They are strong on equipment price and delivery, and can compare brands side by side. However, they usually do not hold process design or post-installation tuning in house and pass that work to partner companies.

There is no need to strike this type off the list. As an advisor on device selection they are useful. What must be settled in the contract is who is responsible for making the whole thing run as a machine.

Type 4 Local fabricators in Thailand

Around the industrial estates in Thailand there are many small and medium fabricators handling machining, welding, sheet metal and simple control work. For a conveyor extension, a jig or a straightforward single-purpose machine, they are a genuine option on both price and response speed.

Their weakness is documentation and repeatability. Drawings do not survive, programs are not backed up, and when the responsible person leaves nobody understands the machine. The practical side of choosing a company around Bangkok is covered in how to choose an automation company in Bangkok.

The four types side by side

The point of this table is that you must not mix the four types in a single competitive bid. The moment you mix them, the narrowest scope looks like the lowest price. Decide the type first, then line up three companies within that type. That is the precondition for a meaningful comparison.

Seven criteria for evaluating an automation equipment manufacturer

Once the type is fixed, evaluate individual companies. We have narrowed the criteria to seven. You do not need full marks on all of them. The point is to decide in advance which criteria matter for your particular project.

Criterion 1 Experience of your process, not your industry

“Five hundred automation projects delivered” is not usable evidence. What matters is not the count but whether the company has automated the same process you are automating.

Ask three specific questions. Has the company automated this process before? What was the material and weight range of the workpiece in that case? How many years has that installation been running? The third question is the important one. A delivery record without continued operation should not be counted as experience.

Criterion 2 Scope taken in house

An automation system is the sum of five jobs, namely mechanical design, electrical design, control software, installation work and commissioning. Which of the five a company keeps in house differs from company to company.

Subcontracting is not in itself a problem. The problem is that it is invisible in the quotation. Control software and electrical design are the two most often pushed outside, and when they are, even a small change after start-up becomes a two-step process. How to divide the scope of control software is set out in machine software development, which splits it into five layers. The practicalities of putting electrical design outside are in outsourcing electrical design.

Criterion 3 Safety and standards after the 2025 revision

ISO 10218, the safety standard for industrial robots, was revised in 2025, replacing the 2011 versions of Part 1 and Part 2. It was a major overhaul that took close to eight years of work.

The structural point to grasp is that Part 1 applies to the party that designs and manufactures the robot itself, while Part 2 applies to the party that designs and integrates robot applications and robot cells, in other words the system integrator. The revision introduced new robot classifications with matching functional safety requirements, and consolidated ISO/TS 15066, previously a separate document covering collaborative robots, into the main standard. Cybersecurity requirements relating to robot safety were added as well.

The practical question to put to a manufacturer is not “do you comply with ISO 10218” but “who will carry out the risk assessment on this project, and in what format will the record be handed over”. Because Part 2 applies to the party building the cell, the ability to answer with a concrete procedure tells you whether safety is held as a process rather than as a product feature.

Criterion 4 Maintenance and parts, measured in hours

Machines stop. The difficulty is that the cost of the stoppage can exceed the price of the machine.

A study of downtime cost published in 2024 reported that unplanned downtime costs the world’s 500 largest companies around US$1.4 trillion a year, equivalent to 11% of their revenues. The same study found that monthly downtime incidents at major manufacturers fell from 42 in 2019 to 25, and monthly hours lost fell from 39 to 27. Fewer incidents and fewer hours alongside a large cost figure means the weight of each individual incident has grown.

So what you verify about maintenance is not whether a structure exists but the numbers behind it. How many hours to a first response in an emergency? How long until an engineer is physically on site? Are consumables and key parts stocked in Thailand? For how many years is that supply guaranteed? Written into the quotation as conditions, these four items change every conversation you have after start-up.

Criterion 5 Documentation and intellectual property

It is entirely possible to end up with a machine that runs but that nobody in your company can touch. The cause is almost always that deliverables were never named at the ordering stage.

Name what you will receive, namely mechanical drawings, electrical schematics, the bill of materials, the source of the control program, parameters and recipes, the test specification, the operating manual and the maintenance manual. Add two conditions on top, namely which language program comments are written in, and whether your company can hold the licence for the development environment. Receiving the source is meaningless if the development software exists only on the manufacturer’s side.

Criterion 6 People, and whether they are still there in three years

The quality of automation equipment depends far less on the company name than on the individual engineer who did the work. And those engineers are in short supply.

Ask who the lead engineer on your project will be, and how many similar projects that person has led. Then ask who takes over if that person leaves. Personal dependency cannot be eliminated, but whether a handover mechanism exists differs sharply between companies. The supply and demand picture for the engineers behind automation is covered in the shortage of automation technicians.

Criterion 7 Business stability and third-party assessment

Machines last more than ten years. If your supplier disappears during that time, neither parts nor drawings can be traced. Assessing financial health directly is difficult, so look instead for third-party assessment.

Certification by the Control System Integrators Association is one example. It is based on an independent audit against best practices in ten areas, namely general management, human resources management, marketing and business development and sales, financial management, project management, system development life cycle, supporting activities, quality management, service and support, and information systems management and cybersecurity. What matters is that it is evidence of a company being systematically run, not evidence of technical brilliance.

For the development process of a company supplying controls and software there is also IEC 62443-4-1, the security standard for industrial automation and control systems. A company that answers “is security covered” with a product feature and a company that answers with a development process will differ in what they can do for you ten years from now.

Turning the seven criteria into questions

Reading capability out of the quotation itself

Having narrowed the field with the seven criteria, read the quotations last. What you read is not the number but the way the assumptions are written.

A quotation without assumptions always looks cheap

A quotation for automation equipment always carries assumptions, namely workpiece dimensional tolerance, method of supply, power and air, footprint, operating hours and the number of product variants. Whether these appear in the body of the document is the clearest available indicator of whether the company understands your process.

A quotation thin on assumptions will usually be cheaper, because what is not written is not included. The number of assumption lines is proportional to the time that company spent looking at your floor.

The four places extra costs appear

The places where extra quotations appear late in commissioning are remarkably consistent from project to project.

The first is variation in the workpiece. It fits within drawing tolerance but varies in reality, and the feeding mechanism or the gripper has to be remade. The second is the handover to the neighbouring processes. When the steps before and after the automated one remain manual, aligning them takes hours. The third is product changeover. If changeover takes longer than the quotation assumed, the utilisation calculation collapses. The fourth is sending data to upper systems. It gets cut as “not needed this time” and turns out to be needed later.

Write these four in as conditions at the enquiry stage and the spread between companies starts to read as a difference in capability rather than a difference in scope. The reasons automation investment fails to land as expected are set out in the risks and failures of automation investment.

When three prices refuse to line up

When bids diverge sharply, the first thing to suspect is your own specification. If three companies read the same text and produced different numbers, that text leaves room for interpretation.

The way they diverge can be read. If one company is alone in being expensive, it may have spotted a step the others missed. If one is alone in being cheap, either scope is missing or it is buying a reference project. Neither is bad news in itself, but if you eliminate on the number without asking why, the same gap comes back later as a variation order.

The centre of gravity shifts with the type of equipment

The seven criteria are common to all projects, but which of them decides the outcome changes with the type of equipment. Where an existing article goes deeper, it is referenced here.

Automating material movement

For automated guided vehicles or autonomous mobile robots, the centre of gravity sits on criterion 4, maintenance, and criterion 2, scope. What moves the price is not the vehicle itself but who owns charging infrastructure, communications, the upper traffic-control layer, and the preparation of floors and routes. The differences between models and vendors are covered in comparing AGV manufacturers.

Automating assembly and handling with robots

Here the weight sits on criterion 1, process experience, and criterion 3, safety. Where the robot shares space with people, the capability of the party that designs and integrates the cell, to which ISO 10218 Part 2 applies, decides the outcome. How to approach this at a smaller plant is set out in robot implementation for small and medium manufacturers.

Automating inspection

The weight sits on criterion 1 and on the question of who owns the pass-fail standard. Inspection automation is accepted not on whether the machine moved as instructed but on whether the judgement is correct, which is a different yardstick from other equipment. The approach for automating dimensional measurement is in automating dimensional inspection.

When control panels and electrical design lead the project

For modifications to existing equipment, or for tying machines together, the weight sits on criterion 5, documentation. Whether to standardise control brands has a long-term effect on spare parts and on training your own technicians. The material for that decision is in selecting a PLC brand.

Equipment type against the criteria that matter

What is specific about choosing a manufacturer in Thailand

Everything above is general. Assume a Thai plant and several further conditions apply.

A Japanese machine builder or a Thai integrator

Bringing in a machine designed and built in Japan is favourable in terms of repeatable quality. On the other hand, modifications and fault response after start-up are subject to distance and time difference. Leaving the work to a Thai integrator gives faster response, but you have to lead the effort to secure documentation and repeatability yourself.

The realistic settlement is to split by type of equipment. Main processes that determine quality go to a machine builder with a track record, while conveying, jigs and peripheral labour-saving machines go to a local integrator. The basis for the split is not price but how many hours it takes for a person to arrive when the machine stops.

Building the BOI 2026 measure into the investment plan

The Thailand Board of Investment offers a measure aimed at productivity improvement by existing operators. Upgrading machinery, including the introduction of automation and robotics, attracts relief from import duty on machinery together with a three-year corporate income tax exemption.

The exemption is capped in principle at 50% of the qualifying investment. Where at least 30% of the value of the automation or robotics machinery is linked to machinery manufactured domestically in Thailand, the cap rises to 100%. The qualifying investment is a minimum of 1 million baht excluding land and working capital, and implementation must be completed within three years of the issue of the promotion certificate.

This is where the measure connects to supplier selection. Because the domestic manufacturing ratio governs the cap, which manufacturer you choose feeds directly into your tax position. The application requires a breakdown of the eligible equipment, procurement evidence and commissioning milestones, so asking for a breakdown by country of manufacture at the enquiry stage will make the later work considerably lighter. How to build the wider investment plan is covered in capital expenditure planning for factories.

A domestic parts supply chain is starting to form

In February 2026 the Thailand Board of Investment approved investment by five companies to build the country’s first production base for humanoid robot components. Combined initial investment exceeds 10 billion baht, covering ball screws, planetary roller screws, actuators and robot frames and joints. The sites are in Chonburi, Chachoengsao and Rayong, and the projects are expected to create more than 1,000 high-skilled jobs and to source around 45 billion baht of domestic materials and parts a year.

This will not reach factory procurement immediately. The direction, however, is that drive-train components previously imported may become available inside Thailand, which means that criterion 4, parts supply and lead time, could look different within a few years. That is worth building into the number of years of parts supply you agree with a supplier.

Write the operating language into the order

A conversation about machines always returns to a conversation about people. Putting the operator screens into Thai achieves nothing if nobody knows what to do when an alarm appears.

What belongs in the specification is a separation between operator training and maintenance training, an explicit statement of the language each is delivered in, and a decision on the language of manuals and program comments. A standard handover from a machine builder can amount to a manual in Japanese or English and a few hours of operating instruction. Whether that is enough depends on your local maintenance organisation.

How to read the 2026 investment climate

Finally, some material on timing.

In the 2026 manufacturing outlook published by a major professional services firm in November 2025, based on a survey of 600 executives, 80% said they planned to put 20% or more of their improvement budget into smart manufacturing initiatives. Those planning to use AI operating in the physical world within two years stood at 22%, up from 9% today. At the same time, 78% named trade uncertainty as their leading concern, and input costs were expected to rise by an average of 5.4% over the coming year.

The technology trends for 2026 published by the International Federation of Robotics in January 2026 list five themes, namely AI raising robot autonomy, the convergence of IT and OT, the expansion of humanoids, agentic AI, and robots as a response to labour shortages. What they share is the assumption that a machine no longer stands alone but connects to data and networks.

For a buyer this has two practical meanings. First, since costs are trending upward, deferring the decision is unlikely to make it cheaper. Second, since equipment installed now has a high probability of being asked for data connectivity within a few years, it is worth writing in the condition that even if the transmission function is not built now, the data must be retrievable.

Checklist before you send the enquiry

Items you can fill in internally before you approach any automation equipment manufacturer.

• Have you drawn the process you want to automate on one sheet, including the steps before and after
• Have you prepared measured values for workpiece dimensions, weight, material, tolerance and variation
• Have you fixed the target cycle time down to the conditions under which it is measured
• Have you written out the number of product variants and the changeover frequency
• Have you decided which of the four supplier types you will approach
• Have you narrowed the seven criteria down to the two that matter for this project
• Have you listed the deliverables by name
• Have you written first response time and years of parts supply into the conditions
• If you are using the BOI measure, have you asked for a breakdown by country of manufacture
• Have you decided who is trained and in what language

If the first four are filled in, the conversation with a manufacturer will get as far as a concrete discussion of man-hours. Leave them blank and a competitive bid will simply produce quotations covering different scopes.

Frequently asked questions

How many automation equipment manufacturers should we approach?

Three, from within the same type. Approaching five or more across all four types produces quotations covering different scopes and the comparison itself breaks down. Decide the type first, then three within it. If you do want to compare across types, it is easier to treat them as separate competitive bids, for example three machine builders and three integrators.

Is the number of past projects a valid selection criterion?

The count itself is not. What to look at is whether the company has handled your process, whether the workpiece material and weight were comparable, and whether the oldest installation is still running. The third point matters most. A delivery that fell out of use within a few years should not be counted as experience.

Should labour-saving machines go to an automation equipment manufacturer or to a local fabricator?

It depends on the character of the machine. For a single-purpose machine that does not determine quality and has a manual fallback if it stops, a local fabricator is a genuine option on both price and response speed. For a machine that determines quality, or that sits where a stoppage halts the whole line, prioritise track record and the survival of documentation. The dividing line is not the complexity of the machine but the blast radius when it stops.

What is the difference between a Thai automation equipment manufacturer and a Japanese machine builder?

It is a choice between repeatability and response speed. Japanese machine builders have many units of the same model in service and commissioning is repeatable, but modifications and fault response after start-up are subject to distance and time difference. Thai integrators respond quickly and work in the local language, but you must lead the effort to ensure drawings and programs actually survive. There is no need to standardise on one company across the plant, and it is more practical to assume a split by process.

Does the ISO 10218 revision matter to a factory as well?

It does. The 2025 revision replaced the 2011 versions of Part 1 and Part 2, and Part 2 applies to the party that designs and integrates robot applications and robot cells, that is, the company building your machine. ISO/TS 15066 covering collaborative robots was consolidated into the main standard and cybersecurity requirements were added. A factory does not need to read the clauses, but deciding as an ordering condition who performs the risk assessment and in what format you receive the record connects directly to your own scope of responsibility as the user.

Does using the BOI measure constrain supplier selection?

Less a constraint than one more condition. Where at least 30% of the value of the automation or robotics machinery is linked to machinery manufactured in Thailand, the cap on the corporate income tax exemption rises from 50% to 100% of the qualifying investment. So where two candidates are technically comparable, the domestic manufacturing ratio becomes one input to the decision. Requiring a breakdown by country of manufacture for the main components at the enquiry stage makes the application work lighter later.

Summary

The key points of this article.

Comparing automation equipment manufacturers collapses into a price contest not because of the numbers but because of the types. Machine builders, system integrators and engineering companies, trading companies and dealers, and local fabricators each quote the scope they are good at against the same enquiry. Mix them in one competitive bid and the narrowest scope looks like the lowest price. Fix the type first, then line up three companies within that type.

Evaluate individual companies against seven criteria, namely process experience, scope taken in house, safety and standards, maintenance and parts supply, documentation and intellectual property, people, and business stability with third-party assessment. You do not need full marks on all seven. Narrow them to the two that decide your project and the decision moves. Experience is measured by process rather than count, and maintenance by first response time rather than by the existence of a structure.

What you read in a quotation is not the number but the way the assumptions are written. A quotation thin on assumptions looks cheap, but what is not written is not included. Extra costs consistently appear in four places, namely workpiece variation, handover to neighbouring processes, product changeover, and sending data upward. Write those into the enquiry conditions and the price spread starts to read as capability rather than scope.

On the numbers, 542,000 industrial robots were installed in 2024, the operational stock reached 4,664,000 units, up 9% year on year, and Asia took 74% of new installations. Global robot density averaged 132 units per 10,000 employees, with Singapore at 818. The downtime study put losses from unplanned stoppages at the world’s 500 largest companies at around US$1.4 trillion a year, or 11% of revenue. The fact that the cost of downtime can exceed the price of the machine is why maintenance sits among the criteria.

In Thailand, the BOI measure offers a three-year corporate income tax exemption for machinery upgrades, capped in principle at 50% and rising to 100% where at least 30% of the automation or robotics machinery is linked to domestic manufacture. Because supplier selection feeds directly into that condition, it is worth asking for a breakdown by country of manufacture at the enquiry stage.

Choosing an automation equipment manufacturer is not the act of buying a machine. It is the act of choosing who you will work with for ten years. Lining up prices can wait until the scopes are aligned.

In most cases the thinking about automation begins before the process to be automated has been fully carved out. TOMAS TECH works with Japanese manufacturers operating in Thailand from exactly that stage, helping to decide which supplier type to approach and which criteria to evaluate against. You are welcome to get in touch while you are still deciding, through the contact page.

References

• International Federation of Robotics — World Robotics 2025 Report
• International Federation of Robotics — Robot Density Surges in Europe, Asia, and Americas
• International Federation of Robotics — Top 5 Global Robotics Trends 2026
• The Robot Report — North American robot orders rise by 6.6% in 2025
• The Robot Report — ISO 10218 industrial robot safety standard receives major overhaul
• Control System Integrators Association — Certification
• AEMT — The True Cost of Downtime 2024
• Deloitte — 2026 Manufacturing Industry Outlook
• Mahanakorn Partners — Thailand’s BOI in 2026
• The Nation Thailand — BOI approves 10bn-baht push to build humanoid robot parts base in Thailand