Building an American AMR: Inside Nick Saur’s Vision for Customer‑First Robotics
Article from MHI Solutions Magazine
IN AN INDUSTRY crowded with autonomous mobile robots (AMRs)—and even more crowded with unmet promises—Nick Saur, CEO co‑founder of MHI member USAMR, is blunt about what’s broken in the AMR market, and equally clear about what he intends to fix.
“The idea of shelf‑to‑goods and shelf‑to‑person is not new,” he said. “The technology was proven by Amazon. Then the rest of the U.S. caught on. China took the market by storm.”
But Saur’s experience as an automation integrator left him with a front‑row seat to the chaos behind the curtain. “I was integrating the best of the best technology in mobile robots. It was quite a dumpster fire behind the scenes.”
The biggest problem, he said, wasn’t the robots. It was the support.
“When you need a change, support, spare parts or just someone to talk to figure out how to best do something, it’s almost impossible,” Saur said. “All the big players in the game have identified that customer service is an issue. We are going to be customer‑centric where none of our systems or customers will be left high and dry. They’ll have 24/7/365 customer care here in the U.S.”
That commitment is tied to another differentiator: U.S.‑based manufacturing and U.S.‑built software. “A lot of the value proposition is that we are made here in West Michigan,” Saur said. “We are developing the software that manages the fleets in tandem. It’s an organic solution, not some company in the U.S. with software trying to adapt to foreign hardware. There’s often a miscommunication between those, from country to country…”
