Cleaning Robot ROI Math That Survives the CFO

Operations loves the robot. Finance kills the deal. The gap is almost always a cost model that ignores the boring line items. Here is the model we use, and the one our Fleet & ROI Planner implements.

The two columns

You are comparing two ways to clean the same square metres at the same frequency.

Manual cleaning (the status quo)

manual_hours/yr = (area / manual_throughput) × passes/yr
manual_cost/yr  = manual_hours/yr × fully_loaded_labour_rate

Use a fully loaded labour rate — wages plus benefits, payroll tax, turnover, and supervision. In many markets that's 1.3–1.5× the base wage.

Robot cleaning (the proposal)

robot_hours/yr  = (area / real_throughput) × passes/yr
opex/yr         = robot_hours × energy_cost + annual_maintenance
capital/yr      = purchase_price / lifespan_years
supervision/yr  = supervision_hours × labour_rate
robot_total/yr  = opex + capital + supervision

The number finance actually asks for

Payback period is the question behind every other question:

payback_months = purchase_price / (manual_cost − robot_opex − supervision) × 12

Note what's not in the denominator: capital. Payback measures how fast the operating savings repay the up-front machine. A healthy deal in a large hard-floor facility lands at 14–28 months. Above ~40 months, the deal is fragile to any change in labour rates or utilization.

Three honesty checks

1. Real throughput, not spec-sheet. Discount rated coverage by 25–40% — and harder (around 55%) for bold "up to" theoretical-max figures.
2. Don't zero out humans. Robots shift labour, they rarely eliminate it. Budget supervision.
3. Match lifespan to reality. Five years is typical; aggressive duty cycles shorten it.

Plug your own numbers into the Fleet & ROI Planner — it shows every line item so you can hand the breakdown straight to finance.