INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 06, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The strategic collaboration between Hurco Companies, Inc. (Nasdaq: HURC), a global leader in CNC machine tools and control technologies, and Universal Robots (UR), a pioneer in collaborative robotics, has culminated in the development of a revolutionary automation solution aimed at tackling the most significant challenge that manufacturers face today – the pervasive, and increasing, shortage of machinists and other skilled labor.
While the benefits of automation have been obvious for years, the costs associated with implementing custom solutions has remained a high barrier to adoption, particularly for Hurco’s target demographic of high-mix manufacturers. The success of the Hurco-UR collaboration stems from our shared philosophy of bringing usable technology to the masses. What Hurco did for CNC machine controls, having invented conversational programming, UR did for robotics, by empowering end-users to program and operate cobots easily and safely.
Hurco’s new Conversational Automation Job Manager combines the power of these two systems by orchestrating and controlling the cobot and CNC machine as a singular system. This not only frees up the tightening number of available workers from performing tedious and monotonous manual machine tending tasks, but also allows manufacturers to gain long term control over their ability to meet their future production demands. With Hurco’s patent-pending job setup technology, manufacturers can change jobs in less than five minutes without having to learn how to program a robot. By offering complete and fully integrated plug-and-play solutions, designed and developed by Hurco engineers, today’s manufacturers can have full confidence they will be up and running independently with robotic machine tending in less than a day’s time.
“The future of manufacturing lies in smart automation solutions,” said Greg Volovic, President and CEO of Hurco Companies, Inc. “By partnering with Universal Robots, we’ve developed a cutting-edge product that not only addresses the immediate labor shortage, but also brings a practical and user-friendly approach to automation adoption. Together, we are transforming the way manufacturers think about automation.”
For more information about Hurco’s IMTS booth space and presence, please visit hurco.com/imts.
About Hurco Companies, Inc.
Hurco Companies, Inc. is an international, industrial technology company that sells its three brands of computer numeric control (“CNC”) machine tools to the worldwide metal cutting and metal forming industry. Two of the Company’s brands of machine tools, Hurco and Milltronics, are equipped with interactive controls that include software that is proprietary to each respective brand. The Company designs these controls and develops the software. The third brand of CNC machine tools, Takumi, is equipped with industrial controls that are produced by third parties, which allows the customer to decide the type of control added to the Takumi CNC machine tool. The Company also produces high-value machine tool components and accessories and provides automation solutions that can be integrated with any machine tool. The end markets for the Company’s products are independent job shops, short-run manufacturing operations within large corporations, and manufacturers with production-oriented operations. The Company’s customers manufacture precision parts, tools, dies, and/or molds for industries such as aerospace, defense, medical equipment, energy, transportation, and computer equipment. The Company is based in Indianapolis, Indiana, with manufacturing operations in Taiwan, Italy, the U.S., and China, and sells its products through direct and indirect sales forces throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The Company has sales, application engineering support and service subsidiaries in China, the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, the U.S., and Taiwan. Web Site: www.hurco.com
About Universal Robots
Universal Robots is a leading provider of collaborative robots (cobots) used across a wide range of industries and in education. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Odense, Denmark, with Americas headquarters in Novi, MI, Universal Robots aims to create a world where people work with robots, not like robots. Its mission is simple: Automation for anyone. Anywhere. Since introducing the world’s first commercially viable cobot in 2008, Universal Robots has developed a product portfolio reflecting a range of reaches and payloads and has sold over 75,000 cobots worldwide. An extensive ecosystem has grown around the company’s cobot technology creating innovation, choice for customers and a wide range of components, kits and solutions to suit every application. Learn more at: www.universal-robots.com
Certain statements in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, among others, the cyclical nature of the machine tool industry; uncertain economic conditions, which may adversely affect overall demand, in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific markets; the risks of our international operations; governmental actions, initiatives and regulations, including import and export restrictions, duties and tariffs and changes to tax laws; the effects of changes in currency exchange rates; competition with larger companies that have greater financial resources; our dependence on new product development; the need and/or ability to protect our intellectual property assets; the limited number of our manufacturing and supply chain sources; increases in the prices of raw materials, especially steel and iron products; the effect of the loss of members of senior management and key personnel; our ability to integrate acquisitions; acquisitions that could disrupt our operations and affect operating results; failure to comply with data privacy and security regulations; breaches of our network and system security measures; possible obsolescence of our technology and the need to make technological advances; impairment of our assets; negative or unforeseen tax consequences; uncertainty concerning our ability to use tax loss carryforwards; changes in the SOFR rate; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health epidemics and pandemics on the global economy, our business and operations, our employees and the business, operations and economies of our customers and suppliers; and other risks and uncertainties discussed more fully under the caption “Risk Factors” in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We expressly disclaim any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
For More Information:
Sonja K. McClelland
Executive Vice President, Treasurer, & Chief Financial Officer
P: +1.317.293.5309
