COVER STORY
FEATURE
STICKY BUSINESS How Innovative Automation gambled and won launching a serial product, the RoboTape. BY DAVID GERSOVITZ
Given that success, RoboTape’s manuf actur ing footprint became too large for Innovative’s Barrie, ON facility last year, when production was shifted to a second facility in Newmarket. Even so, production may outgrow that facility within 2-3 years, says Innovative Automation president, Michael Lalonde, who co-owns the company with CEO Stephen Loftus. With more than 200 employees, Innovative is hardly a mom-andpop shop. However, developing a serial product is a different beast than producing one-offs. It requires direct sales and support strategies extendable worldwide, as well as a professional marketing campaign. Add to that the budgeting and billing for continuous production and managing a large
Innovative Automation’s RoboTape system features a versatile remote tape feeding design that separates the Payout (left) from the Applicator (right), which can be mounted to any articulated robot.
(From left) Gary Yearwood, RoboTape Business Unit Manager; Sean Robillard, lead electrical engineer; Michael Lalonde, President and co-owner of Innovative Automation; Ray Reginato, Festo Canada’s Industry Segment Specialist for electronics and assembly. 12 DESIGN ENGINEERING November/December 2023
parts inventory, plus legal requirement, such as contracts, warranties and patent filings.
A Familiar Path
Prior to RoboTape, Innovative had followed a familiar path. From its founding in 1989, it focused almost entirely on custom automation for the automotive sector, later diversifying into medical devices and consumer goods. By the late-2010s, Innovative’s growth allowed for the creation of a small R&D department, Lalonde says. Innovative had built foam taping machines for a customer, but it was still a custom product, pre-cutting the tape, then picking and placing it. Later on, Lalonde and a colleague were brainstorming about leveraging the experience gained from that project. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could make the cut in the [robotic] head, and how can we get the tape to the head and make it a flexible system for any project?’” From the outset, Innovative knew there was enormous market potential for the RoboTape system. For one, global sales of technical tapes used in manufacturing are expected to double this decade, most such adhesives – whether for joining, insulating, bonding or glazing – but are still applied manually. The largest market is automotive, where pressure sensitive tapes DESIGN-ENGINEERING.com
Photo credit:De Havilland Canada
If a Canadian manufacturing success is the culmination of a journey, then Barrie, ONbased Innovative Automation has taken a path rarely traveled. It’s seldom that a custom machine builder creates a serial product, let alone one now garnering sales worldwide. But that’s the path the custom machine builder chose when it developed RoboTape, an automated system for feeding and installing adhesive-backed foams, felts and attachment tapes In the four years since development began, the RoboTape system has generated several million dollars in orders, led to a collaboration agreement with global tape manufacturer, 3M, and is now fast approaching 100 units installed in the field.
