This is a MiR company case study.
Two mobile robots independently transport goods internally in the Austrian location of Flex, one of the world’s leading technology companies. Automating these monotonous tasks keeps processes lean, efficient and flexible, taking the strain off employees and enabling them to devote time to more critical activities.
At Flex’s Austrian location in Althofen/Kärnten, to meet customer requirements and at the same time remain profitable, the ‘Lean Six Sigma’ approach is deeply anchored in the company’s philosophy. The primary aim of this management method is the lean and efficient design of the value-creation chain.
“Our production is very flexible, and this, of course, entails particular challenges for internal goods transportation as well. For instance, we often find ourselves in a situation where numerous transportation runs occur in a very short space of time, from the main warehouse to the manufacturing area. In this connection, it is, of course, very important to reduce the travelling time as much as possible,” says Christoph Schaller, Director of Engineering at Flex. About a year and a half ago, discussions began regarding reducing unnecessary travelling time. However, the idea of a transportation system with magnetic strips was rejected relatively quickly. The company’s production layout generally changes every three to six months, and according to Schaller, installing a new magnetic strip every time a production layout changes would mean considerable additional expenditure. “At the 2015 Hannover Trade Fair, we became aware of the mobile robots offered by Mobile Industrial Robots. After examining this system, we concluded that we had found a product that could meet our highly flexible requirements in terms of intralogistics and yet was very affordable.” In the same year, 2015, the first of the two MiR100 robots was finally purchased, with the second just six months later.
Thanks to Flex’s mobile goods transportation helpers, there is now a fully automated 600-metre stretch running without interruption from the central warehouse to the production area, with the robot’s load weight of up to 100 kilograms. There are certainly some obstacles to the robots on this stretch, such as high-speed interior doors. “But on a day-to-day basis, these aren’t a problem. The communication system in the MiR100 is connected to the doors and tells them when they need to open. This is working very well,” says a confident Christoph Schaller.
The automation of internal goods transportation has already paid off for employees. Thanks to the new technology, they have been mainly freed from monotonous transportation tasks. The resulting increased available time has enabled them to focus more on logistics. In this way, substantial process optimisations have been achieved, as Christoph Schaller explains: “Transporting goods from A to B is now carried out by robots, and the activities of the employees have therefore increasingly shifted to goods receipt. For this reason, there is more time available in the central warehouse for the pre-portioning of goods deliveries to the production facility, likewise for the filling of fixed locations. As a result, the portions are now much more equitable, which ultimately benefits the employees at all stages of our production chain.”
Using the two MiR100 robots has proved to be a very positive experience. In the medium term, however, the potential of mobile robotics will be even more fully exploited. Its scope of activities in the company will be gradually expanded, and to this end, it will also use the patented MiRHook system from Mobile Industrial Robots. This new product component can be connected directly to the MiR100 and will enable the fully automated transportation of carts weighing up to 300 kilograms. “The first step was the use of robots for transporting goods from the main warehouse,” explains Christoph Schaller. “When we saw that working perfectly, we asked ourselves: what other possibilities does this technology offer for us? And, of course, the possibilities are even further extended by the Hook system, which is also becoming more flexible to use. The next logical step for us is to use the robots in combination with the Hook system for the transportation of finished goods to the dispatch department.”
To find out more about MiR robots, visit our MiR Autonomous Mobile Robots page.
