After purchasing a small building in Delphos, Ohio, the company began its initial year with only six employees and in the middle of the infamous 2008 recession. By December 2008, the company had grown to over thirty employees and has been evolving and expanding ever since.

The nascent company’s first big opportunity came in its initial year from CHEP, a global company concerned with moving goods and the largest wooden pallet company in the world. CHEP used mostly basic manual equipment with low automation. Alliance found a strong niche for custom automation in many business sectors like automotive, consumer goods, food & beverage, and the battery & energy industries. As Alliance began work on automating CHEP’s processes, they continued to focus on custom automation projects with partners like Whirlpool, Samsung, Federal Mogul, Lakeview Farms, Dana, and Bridgestone, now a large part of Alliance’s business.

In 2014, the Alliance team studied automation trends in Europe. They discovered the continent was ahead of the United States by twenty years since the end of World War II when a shortage in available labor necessitated developing automation solutions. Applying this information, as well as reports from the lumber industry and a 2012 OSHA study on the leading cause of amputation in the pallet industry being the manual pallet dismantler, Alliance sought to improve pallet recycling. The improvement objective led to the development of the Robotic Pallet Dismantler, The Urban Sawmill, and Sort & Repair Systems. These products have nearly doubled pallet production while using fewer people, helping to solve the ongoing labor problem and bring more automation opportunities into the market.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is well underway with the present-day labor shortage, which has created a massive opportunity for automation across all sectors and has led to a boom within the industry. Alliance Automation’s in-house engineers supply the company with the proper skills for each unique robotic and automation opportunity. Alliance is keeping pace with industry growth by supporting STEM education, through coaching and funding local robotics clubs. Alliance has also established a scholarship fund for engineering students and implemented education programs such as internships, co-ops, O.W.E, and an apprenticeship program. We believe in supporting the next generation of automation engineers so much that we created a classroom in our new facility to aid in Alliance’s recruitment efforts.