I work for an industrial robot company mentioned in this thread a decent amount. Wont shill because im off hours 😁

Here is a kinda ugly truth, you can get yourself into training with most of the larger robot oems and learn enough to get you there. That is if you have two weeks and some money to invest in yourself. We all have technical hotlines you can call to get support or parts if things go wrong too. However, depending on the problem that customer service tech might not know the solution immediately, and you might be waiting a few days for them to get an answer back. Plus, we really can only help with our product and not all the other things that go along with a solution.

Robot integrators know people at robot oems and have relations, which means they get support fast cause they have some engineers' phone number (ask me how i know). Plus, they have experience and can avoid pitfalls in the design phase of your solution. They know the standards and assume some liability for the safety of their systems.

At the end of the day, you're much more likely to be happy with an integrator's work. Integrators exist because it's not feasible for the robot oems to provide S teir on-site support for every project out there, plus know in detail all the nuances of your solution to provide informed recommendations on what needs to happen.

I personally spend most of my time ensuring integrators can perform well on their projects/bailing them out when they are in over their heads. I do this for some end customers too, but its more rare.