The study focuses on what core competence SME working with automation solutions for manufacturing purposes have. The study was done both as an interview and a walk around the workshop floor of each company. All the companies in the study belong to the same business network, but had separate ecosystems. The core competence of automation solutions providers is being skilful prototypers. These companies have vast experience working with many types of manufacturing equipment, but much less formal education in the area, so they have almost a sixth sense of which solutions will work. This means they can rapidly start to build prototypes in their workshops, but their customers to help out in a live environment as production engineers and solve everyday kind of problems also usually trust them