Flex and Teradyne Robotics expand partnership to scale intelligent automation across global manufacturing

Flex and Teradyne Robotics have expanded their collaboration to accelerate intelligent automation across global manufacturing. Under the expanded relationship, Flex plays a dual role: deploying Teradyne Robotics solutions—including Universal Robots (UR) collaborative industrial robots and Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) autonomous mobile robots—within its own production facilities, while also manufacturing key robotics components for Teradyne Robotics customers worldwide. Dennis Kirkpatrick, president of Lifestyle, Consumer Devices and Core Industrial at Flex, and Jean-Pierre Hathout, president of the Teradyne Robotics Group, jointly announced the partnership expansion on May 13, 2026. The combination of manufacturing and real-world deployment provides continuous operational feedback, validating robotics technologies at scale and enabling faster replication of successful automation workflows across Flex's global footprint.

This partnership matters for the additive manufacturing and industrial automation ecosystem because it demonstrates how large-scale contract manufacturers like Flex are integrating robotics and physical AI into production environments that increasingly include AM workflows. Flex's role as both manufacturer and deployer of UR cobots and MiR AMRs creates a closed-loop validation cycle that directly addresses the integration gap between automation hardware and real-world factory floor conditions. The partnership builds on a 20-year relationship between Flex and Teradyne in semiconductor equipment manufacturing, extending into intelligent automation that can support AM post-processing, material handling, and part inspection workflows. For the AM industry, this signals that major manufacturing service providers are treating robotics and automation as infrastructure investments rather than point solutions, which could accelerate adoption of automated AM cells in high-mix production environments.

From an AM industry perspective, this partnership is a practical step toward closing the automation gap that has limited AM's scalability in production. Flex's ability to validate UR and MiR technologies in its own factories before deploying them for customers reduces integration risk and shortens deployment timelines. The real test will be whether Flex can replicate these automation workflows across its 100+ global facilities and translate them into measurable throughput improvements for AM-specific applications like powder handling, build plate removal, and post-processing. For AM buyers, this means the path to automated production cells is becoming more standardized and less custom-engineered, which lowers both cost and implementation complexity.