The primary products of Robotic Grippers, Inc. are robotic grippers that can be used by any organization that employs robots in its operations. It is a medium sized company having approximately 400 employees. It has one plant situated in the United States. It is a division of a larger corporation that has operations in several parts of the United States and in some foreign countries.

The company maintains the following organizational units:

Sales/Marketing/Customer support
Product Engineering
Purchasing
Quality Assurance
Manufacturing
Shipping and Receiving

The robotic gripper business unit was started in 1980 as robots became more widely used in the U. S. It has been a successful company making a profit consistently. However, it is considered to be a fairly traditional manufacturer and is only starting to consider the implementation of "world class" manufacturing techniques such as synchronous manufacturing, activity based accounting, waste reduction, setup reduction, and inventory reduction. The company would like to improve the service to its customers and reduce the time required to develop new products.

The company has three major profit centers that share the production facility.

1. The largest segment of the company's production is a line of standard grippers that are available for purchase through a catalog directly from the company or through stocking distributors.

2. The company designs and produces special grippers for unique customer needs that cannot be satisfied by a standard gripper.

3. Robotic Grippers, Inc. also provides contract production of individual parts for a variety of customers using its excellent capability in CNC machining and plastics parts production. Customers of its contract production business are calling for improvements in its just-in-time performance.