Vacuum Cleaner Manufacturing: From Hoover to ABB Robots

Vacuum cleaner manufacturing has grown from a janitor's workshop in Ohio to plants that build thousands of machines a day. A vacuum looks simple, yet each one holds a fast motor, a molded housing, filters, a cord or a battery pack, and a lot of screws. This post follows the product from the first electric sweeper to cyclonic and cordless machines. It looks at recent news from a British factory, at where ABB robots such as the IRB 1300, the GoFa and the IRB 360 FlexPicker fit on the line, and at the open problems.

A Numatic Henry vacuum cleaner with its painted face. Photo: Pete from Liverpool / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

From carpet beaters to the Hoover Model O

Before electricity, floors were cleaned with brooms and carpet beaters. In 1901 the British engineer Hubert Cecil Booth and the American inventor David T. Kenney each developed a suction cleaner on their own. Both pulled dust out with suction instead of beating it out, and later cleaners all copied that idea. Each machine was still close to a one off, so the problem of building millions of small, cheap units had not appeared yet. A sweeper light enough to carry came next.

A Booth's Patents vacuum cleaner on a wheeled cart at the Science Museum, London. Photo: Matt Brown / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

The portable machine came in 1907, when James Murray Spangler, a department store janitor in Canton, Ohio, built the first portable electric vacuum cleaner. He received a patent for his Electric Suction Sweeper on 2 June 1908. He sold the idea to William Henry Hoover, a maker of leather goods, who redesigned it with a steel casing, casters and attachments. Hoover's first machine, the Model O, sold for 60 dollars in 1908.

A vintage Hoover upright vacuum at the Ohio History Center. Photo: DogsRNice / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Production grew from there. Kirby built its Cleveland, Ohio, factory in 1916, and the company says it still makes all its vacuums in the United States there. James Dyson introduced a portable cyclonic cleaner in 1979 and launched it in Japan in the 1980s, then released the DC01 upright in the UK in 1993 for 200 pounds. Each step changed what the line had to build, from sheet steel and cloth bags to molded plastic bodies and sealed cyclones. A cyclone has no bag, so the plastic dust bin and the air paths inside it have to be molded and sealed well, and that puts more weight on the molding and assembly steps.

A Dyson DC07 cyclonic vacuum cleaner. Photo: F. Duten / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

What a vacuum line asks of a robot

Today the line is a mix of molding, motor work and hand assembly. The Henry vacuum, first sold by Numatic in 1981, is one example. Wikipedia describes Henry as the only mass produced consumer vacuum cleaner still made in the United Kingdom, and in 2017 the Chard factory in Somerset employed over 1,000 people and produced 4,500 units a day. Numatic's owner is Chris Duncan. Plastic bodies, hoses, brushes and tools arrive from molding, and workers fit motors, cables and filters, then test each machine before it goes into a box.

Boxed Numatic Hetty, Henry and James vacuum cleaners on a shop shelf. Photo: Radarsmum67 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Recent news comes from that same plant. The Manufacturer reported in September 2026 that Numatic was marking National Manufacturing Day by pointing to more than 85 million pounds of investment in its Somerset business. That covers a 24,500 square meter expansion, a new R and D centre, an 8,000 pallet distribution centre due in spring 2027, and a 2,672 panel solar array that could supply up to 30 percent of the factory's electricity. The figures come from the company, and the article does not say the plant uses robots.

An engineer programs an ABB SWIFTI CRB 1100 cobot with a tablet at a small workshop bench. Photo: ABB

Where could ABB fit? The IRB 1300 is a compact industrial robot that can load parts into test stations and fixtures, and the GoFa CRB 15000 is a cobot that works beside people on screwdriving and testing. The IRB 360 FlexPicker, a fast delta robot, can pack filters and small accessories off a moving line, and an IRB 1200 can tend machines. ABB's cobots already sit on appliance lines: an Electrolux plant in Curitiba uses a GoFa on its refrigerator test line, which is the same kind of job. For vacuums this is only a possibility, since no named customer is known. See ABB cobots on appliance lines.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 connecting test equipment to a refrigerator on an Electrolux line. Photo: ABB

Cordless packs, motors and next lines

The biggest change is the battery. A cordless stick vacuum needs a pack of cells, a motor controller and a brushless motor, which makes the product more like a small power tool or e-bike than a simple appliance. Cell handling and pack assembly need clean, repeatable work, and ABB robots in EV battery assembly show the method at a larger scale. The motor itself follows the steps in electric motor manufacturing, with winding, magnet insertion and balancing.

A cordless handheld vacuum cleaner with a removable battery pack. Photo: Shixart1985 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Robot vacuums add sensors, lidar and mapping to the bill of materials. Electrolux sold the Trilobite as the first autonomous cordless robot vacuum in 2001, and Neato launched a lidar mapping robot in 2009. These machines have more circuit boards and fewer large molded parts, so the line moves toward electronics assembly, camera calibration and software loading. A program for such a cell is usually built and tested first in RobotStudio, which shows reach and cycle time before any metal is bought.

An Electrolux Trilobite robot vacuum cleaner. Photo: Patrik Tschudin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Product ranges change quickly, so a line has to switch between corded, cordless and robot models without a long rebuild. Cobots help because teams can reprogram them in hours, but safety checks and fixture design still take skilled engineers. Repair and recycling are growing concerns, since batteries and sealed motors are hard to open. Factories that invest, as Numatic is doing in Somerset, will decide how much of this work stays with people and how much moves to arms. Training matters as much as hardware, because a cell only pays off when the people who run it can change it.

An ABB IRB 1300 small industrial robot with an operator holding the FlexPendant. Photo: ABB

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