ROI You can't measure in Excel

Every time I talk about robots, the same question comes up:

“How many months until ROI?”

Pure math.
Cost. Cycle times. Profitability.

And sure, those numbers matter.
But not everything fits into Excel.

Some returns on investment don’t show up in reports.

The kind you feel on the shop floor.
The kind you see in people.

📌 When was the last time someone asked how much it costs to have no workers?
📌 Or how much you lose in constant recruitment?
📌 What about the cost of your team being exhausted and disengaged?

No one puts that in a report.
But that’s where the real cost is.

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Robots don’t take jobs. Robots keep people.

I once had a situation that stuck with me.

We came to a sausage packaging line.
The operators looked at us and said:

“Oh, here come the guys who are going to take our jobs.”

Fast forward two years.

We came back to the same line.
But this time, the same operators told us:

“Please, fix this robot as soon as possible. We can’t work without it anymore.”

What changed?

They saw with their own eyes how the robot helped them.
It didn’t take their job – it took the worst part of their job.

The work became lighter. More manageable.
And suddenly, no one wanted to go back to the old way.

That’s when ROI stops being just a number.

The return you can’t count.

Everyone measures ROI in money.
But maybe the real return is:

✔ Fewer staffing problems.
✔ Less turnover.
✔ Less burnout.
✔ More people who actually want to stay.

You won’t find that in a spreadsheet.
But you’ll see it on the shop floor.

Do you measure your team’s ROI?

Your factory doesn’t need to be filled with robots.
Sometimes, one well-placed process is enough to keep people around.

Because a robot doesn’t just pay off in spreadsheets.
It pays off in people.

And maybe that’s the most important number missing from Excel.

Cheers, Jacek