Watchmaking Robot History: ABB YuMi and Swiss Watches

A watchmaking robot has to handle parts a person can barely see. A mechanical movement is full of tiny wheels, pinions, springs and screws, and for centuries all of them were cut, fitted and adjusted by hand at a bench by a window. This post follows how that changed, from the machine-made watches of Waltham in the 1850s to the 51-part Swatch of 1983, the SCARA robots Epson built for its own watch lines that same year and the fully automated Sistem51 line that Swatch still runs. Then it looks at where ABB's YuMi and SCARA robots could fit, and at the work that will stay with watchmakers.

A watchmaker at his bench with a lathe, from the Dutch labour inspectorate's photo collection. Photo: Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

From the watchmaker's bench to the Swatch line

For most of its history, watchmaking was hand work. In England a watchmaker served a seven-year apprenticeship and joined a guild such as the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in London before selling a watch. The first serious attempt to make watches by machine came from the United States. Around 1850 Aaron Lufkin Dennison and Edward Howard founded the firm that became the American Waltham Watch Company, after Dennison saw how little the English trade used machines. They designed special machinery for a factory in Massachusetts, and between 1850 and 1957 the company made about 40 million watches, clocks and instruments.

Workers at belt-driven machines in the American Waltham Watch Factory, around 1880. Photo: W. A. Webster / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Switzerland had its own crisis a century later. The Swiss invented the quartz movement in 1967, but Japanese makers put it into cheap watches in large numbers, and by the end of the 1970s ETA, which supplied movements to about 80 percent of Swiss watch companies, saw its output and profits collapse. In 1980 ETA started work on a low-cost plastic watch that could be assembled by total automation. The engineers cut the part count to 51, against more than 90 in a normal quartz watch, moulded the parts straight into the plastic case and replaced screws with rivets and ultrasonic welding. The first twelve Swatch models went on sale in Zürich on 1 March 1983.

A transparent Swatch from 1985, showing the movement through its plastic case. Photo: Hannes Grobe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Japan was automating at the same time. In the 1970s, Epson's predecessor Suwa Seikosha had long rows of workers assembling Seiko quartz watches by hand. In 1981 a team of seven began building a flexible system to assemble the tiny parts, and in May 1983 Epson released its first commercial robots, the SSR-H series of SCARA arms, with a position repeatability of ±0.015 mm and a top speed of 2 m/s. A SCARA swings its arm in a horizontal plane and moves its tool straight up and down, which suits dropping small parts into a movement from above. Epson says its robots still work on its own watch production lines.

A SCARA robot in an assembly cell with a tray stacker, the arm type Epson first built for watch assembly. Photo: Hirata Robotics GmbH / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)

Watch factories today: Sistem51, the Royal Pop and Epson's cobot

Swatch went further in 2013 with Sistem51, which it introduced at Baselworld as the first mechanical movement with entirely automated assembly. Its 51 parts sit on a single central screw, it runs for about 90 hours on a full wind, and it is built on a 20 metre automated line in clean room conditions without human intervention. Where screws would normally hold the bridges, pins are laser welded, so the movement cannot be serviced the traditional way. Swatch used it again in the Royal Pop made with Audemars Piguet, on sale from 16 May 2026 with the first hand-wound Sistem51, and Hodinkee published a behind-the-scenes look at its production on 4 September.

The Swatch buildings in Biel, Switzerland, at night. Photo: MHM55 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sistem51 is still the only mechanical Swiss Made movement built entirely by automated processes, so every other Swiss mechanical movement still passes through human hands somewhere on its way. On 22 September 2026 Epson, whose robot business began on Seiko watch lines, launched the AX6, its first collaborative six-axis robot. It has power and force limiting, which after a proper risk assessment can let it work without the usual safety fences, a light carbon fibre structure, an ISO 5 clean room rating and no-code programming. Epson now sells fast industrial arms, collaborative robots and industrial arms fitted with collaborative safety tools, so a factory can match the safety setup to each station.

A watchmaker at work in his shop, surrounded by clocks. Photo: Maja Stosic / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 RS)

We found no published ABB watchmaking project, which is a little surprising for a company headquartered in Zürich. Its small-parts robots fit the work on paper. The dual-arm YuMi, launched in 2015, and the seven-axis single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 from 2017 carry up to 0.5 kg per arm, and a YuMi can have a camera built into its arm. At Hawa Sliding Solutions in Sirnach, Switzerland, a YuMi has joined and screwed together the two parts of a small stopper element since 2017 and checks quality with that camera, which helped Hawa keep production in Switzerland. ABB's first SCARA line, the IRB 910SC from 2016, carries up to 6 kg with reaches of 450 to 650 mm.

A dual-arm ABB YuMi assembling small stopper parts at Hawa Sliding Solutions in Switzerland. Photo: ABB

What a watchmaking robot could take on next

In watch factories, the likely jobs are the repetitive ones around the movement. A YuMi or a SCARA could kit trays of parts for each watch, drive the small screws that hold a case back or a bracelet, load parts into CNC machines and move finished watches through timing and water resistance tests. None of this is a published ABB watch project yet, so treat it as a possibility. Screwdriving cells are covered in our post on screwdriving assembly, and machine loading in our post on CNC machine tending.

An engineer programs a single-arm ABB YuMi at a work table. Photo: ABB

The open problems are size, oil and judgment. Parts this small are hard to grip and can stick to a gripper or jump away when released, and many need a tiny drop of oil in exactly the right spot. Regulating a balance and judging the finish on a hand-decorated bridge still depend on a trained eye. Many high-end models are made in limited series, which makes each new cell harder to pay for. Cells like these are usually planned and tested in RobotStudio before any part is touched. Sistem51 shows the trade-off, since a movement designed for robots can be cheap and consistent but gives up traditional servicing.

An engineer with an ABB IRB 930 SCARA robot, launched in 2023 for electronics and battery assembly. Photo: ABB

At home and in repair shops, watches will stay hand work for a long time. A watch that needs a service goes to a watchmaker with a loupe and tweezers, and that skill takes years to learn. Sistem51 went the other way, and Swatch says it needs no maintenance for up to 20 years. Most watch owners already wear the results of automation in quartz and plastic watches, even if they never see a robot. For the fine mechanical end of the market, robots look set to stay at the jobs around the movement, with people still doing the fitting, oiling and regulating at the bench.

A street watch repairer in Silifke, Turkey, working with a head loupe. Photo: Yılmaz Kilim / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

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