JR Automation Opens Single-Site Automation Center
The Greenville facility puts engineering, integration and build in one location as the company expands beyond integration alone.
Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Robotics
Live Poll
Would you support large manufacturing plants bringing jobs to your community?
JR Automation opened a $15.5 million automation technology center in Greenville, South Carolina, spanning more than 215,000 square feet. The facility is an operating expansion that brings engineering, integration, project execution and customer collaboration into one location.
Why it matters
The expansion reflects the company's shift from automation integration toward a comprehensive manufacturing operations partner. For a field where robotic systems are increasingly built and deployed as turnkey projects, consolidating those functions under one roof signals where industrial automation services are heading.
The Greenville center's 186,755 square feet of automation build space is dedicated to assembling and integrating robotic and automation systems. The company reports about 100 people working there today, with room to expand as the business grows, though no capacity throughput figures were disclosed.
The players
JR Automation
A Holland, Michigan-based automation integrator with more than 2,000 workers worldwide, whose portfolio centers on turnkey robotic and automation systems for manufacturers.
Hitachi Ltd.
A Japanese multinational technology conglomerate whose industrial operations include automation and whose partnership with Agile Robots was announced in October 2026.
The details
JR Automation designed the Greenville facility around employee workflows, placing engineering, integration, project execution and customer collaboration in a single location. Integration, in this context, means combining separate machines, sensors and control software into one working production line for a customer. Keeping design and build teams together is meant to shorten the handoff between planning a system and assembling it.
Timeline
Monday, Nov. 2, 2026: JR Automation announced the Greenville center.
Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026: Hitachi held a grand opening with ribbon-cutting in Greenville.
Fall 2026: Zeeland headquarters construction was expected to be completed.
May 2027: Revised completion date for the Zeeland headquarters.
The Tech Race
The Greenville and Zeeland projects place JR Automation alongside a wave of industrial firms building domestic automation capacity closer to their customers. Hitachi's partnership with Agile Robots in October 2026 and its Zeeland headquarters project show large automation players investing in the same West Michigan corridor.
Manufacturers in the region can now work with a single provider for engineering, integration and project execution rather than coordinating several vendors. The Greenville center's own timeline for adding capacity has not been specified beyond stating that room exists for growth.
The takeaway
Watch whether JR Automation's single-site model for engineering and build holds as it scales, and track the Zeeland headquarters opening in May 2027 for how many of the projected 150 new jobs materialize. Those two milestones will show whether the integration-to-operations shift is delivering at volume.
What happens next
Hitachi's Zeeland, Michigan global headquarters, a $72.8 million project, has a revised completion date of May 2027, and JR Automation expects at least 150 new jobs from that expansion.
Further reading
Explore more developments in Robotics to see how automation integrators are expanding their role on the factory floor.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Mlive.
Live Poll
Would you support large manufacturing plants bringing jobs to your community?
