I think that it depends on the needs of the company and the functionality of the robots. Below are links to stories about a company where the purchase of two used robots increased productivity, dramatically. If you are referring to exclusively manufacturing shops, then automation using robotics can certainly be considered be considered critical.

If, however, you are talking about small businesses in general it would depend on the what the business is selling/creating. If it is a small artisan business or a service business, it is unlikely that robots would help. On the other hand, a cleaning business could use a Roomba while the human completed other cleaning tasks, therefore increasing the efficiency of the service.
Source(s):
http://www.used-robots.com/blog.php?tag=3
http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/21/smbusiness/Robots.fsb/index.htm


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