Toyota joins US firm to pilot custom manufacturing ‘breakthrough’
7 October 2025 
A Californian specialist in advanced manufacturing and robotics has announced a new method for manufacturing automotive body panels and accessories that, it says, will allow car-makers to sell customised vehicles at mass-production prices, thus achieving a “breakthrough” in automotive customisation. Los Angeles based Machina Labs is piloting the technology with Toyota Motor North America in a project that will use its RoboForming technology to customise the production of body panels, with the aim of bringing automotive-grade quality and throughput to low-volume manufacturing.
Toyota’s growth-stage venture investment arm, Woven Capital, has also made a strategic investment in Machina.
Machina says that its technologies address a massive and growing automotive customisation and accessories industry, which was valued at $2.4bn in 2024 for trucks alone. Conventional high-volume manufacturing often overlooks the potential for customised production. By introducing flexible, low-volume production capabilities into existing operations, Machina Labs says it is unlocking new value streams.
“Traditional production tools are often massive – comparable in size to a small car and weighing over 20 tons,” explains Machina’s CEO and co-founder, Ed Mehr. “With our solution, the need for dedicated tooling per model variation is eliminated. That means lower project capital, less storage both in-plant and for past models – which today can last up to 15 years – and faster production changeovers.”
“We envision a future where customisation is available for every Toyota driver,” adds Zach Choate, general manager of production engineering and core engineering manufacturing at Toyota Motor North America. “The ability to deliver a bespoke product into the hands of our customers is the type of innovation we are excited about.”
Machina Labs’ AI-driven RoboCraftsman platform and its RoboForming technology are a proprietary form of incremental sheet forming that can deliver customised panels from sheet metal for automotive and aerospace applications at high volume, with high quality, and on short lead times – a capability which is not possible using today’s manufacturing processes.
The shift affects process flows in factories. Current manufacturing models require separate storage, repackaging, and dedicated assembly lanes for custom parts. Machina’s approach allows on-demand part production in low volumes from cells that are located close to assembly lines, allowing dynamic batching or broadcast-driven manufacturing – without disrupting existing flows.
Machina Labs, which was founded in 2019, says it is building the next generation of intelligent, adaptive, and software-driven factories, and aims to offer flexible, on-demand production systems that eliminate traditional tooling constraints. Its RoboCraftsman platform integrates advanced robotics and AI-driven controls to manufacture complex metal structures rapidly for aerospace, defence and automotive applications.
“AI-powered manufacturing is transforming how products are designed and produced at scale,” comments George Kellerman, founding managing director of Toyota’s investment business, Woven Capital. “Customers increasingly demand more personalised products while engineers need faster, more cost-effective paths from concept to production without the constraints of traditional supply chains.
“We’re excited to team up with Machina Labs, supercharge their development roadmap in automotive, and support their journey in accelerating innovations that advance the future of manufacturing,” he adds.
Machina Labs has also recently been awarded a contract from the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in partnership with the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute. The multi-year award will expand Machina’s RoboCraftsman platform with advanced AI and machine-learning capabilities tailored to the DoD’s modernisation requirements.
The programme will focus initially on automating tool path generation for airframe skins and panels, which are critical to maintaining Air Force fleet readiness, while laying the foundation to extend these capabilities across other applications. Long delays in sourcing airframe parts can currently ground aircraft.
The broader vision is to develop RoboCraftsman as a flexible manufacturing system capable of producing structural components for defence platforms ranging from aircraft and missiles, to vehicles and weapon systems.
“Our mission is to deliver a portable manufacturing solution that can operate closer to the point of need, even in contested logistics environments,” says Machina Labs CEO, Ed Behr. “This enables mission-critical components to be produced faster, more efficiently, and without dependency on traditional tooling.”
The new capabilities are expected to help cut production timelines, and improve availability of critical aircraft. More broadly, they will reinforce Machina’s strategy to scale its AI-driven, software-defined manufacturing platform across defence, aerospace, automotive and industrial markets.
