´óÏó´«Ã½

Yaskawa America Inc.’s Motoman Robotics Division has completed an expansion to its headquarters in Miamisburg, Ohio. The 185,000-ft.² addition will nearly double the size of the company’s current production space, helping the company meet growing automation demands.

The additional manufacturing space will be utilized to engineer, develop, integrate and build new robotic systems, as well as provide additional space for the retrofit and rebuild of previously deployed units. Billed as the first phase of a broader expansion project, a company spokesperson told Plastics Technology that in a bid to increase capacity to support continuing growth and to strengthen supply chain resilience, Yaskawa Electric Corp. (YEC) has committed to investing approximately $200 million in expansion projects in the U.S., including new manufacturing facilities for robotics and semiconductor motion products in Wisconsin and Ohio.The initial part of the investment is the newly opened 185,000-ft.² expansion in Miamisburg. Yaskawa America Drives and Motion division has also purchased a 207,000-ft.² building in Franklin, Wisconsin, to increase capacity for its low- and medium-voltage variable frequency drives and photovoltaic inverters.

The spokesperson said the company now has more than 400 employees in Miamisburg, Ohio, with the expansion to create approximately 70 new jobs. Once all the expansion plans are completed, Yaskawa America will have nearly 1,750 employees, as the company’s footprint in the U.S. is grown by approximately 25%.