CASE
Just-in-time flow of goods with autonomous mobile robots
At dormakaba, we used autonomous mobile robots to automate the flow of goods between the warehouse and production machines. The robot fleet reduces internal logistics costs, ensures greater safety and can be easily expanded as required - without having to adapt the infrastructure.
The challenge
Dormakaba, headquartered in Rümlang, is one of the world's leading specialists for access solutions and locking systems. At its plants in Wetzikon, the company uses specially developed milling and punching machines to manufacture parts for locking cylinders with the highest precision.
To ensure that today's keys and cylinders, some of which are electronically coded, are correctly matched, a clever control system is needed in production to be able to manufacture the cylinder-key pairs in the required number and coding just in time. As part of a modernization of production, an automated material transport system was considered to reduce internal logistics costs and increase operational reliability at the same time.
The solution
Several mobile robots from Robotec Solutions ensure the just-in-time flow of goods between the warehouse and production machines. Orchestrated by the fleet manager and the master control system - in this case an SAP system - the robots contribute autonomously and flexibly to optimized material transport. The fleet manager takes on the tasks of traffic and battery management as well as order management.
The mobile robots - in different strength classes - independently detect people and obstacles and automatically calculate the optimum collision-free path. Once again, dormakaba revealed the advantages that autonomous and agile mobile robots offer in internal logistics. In addition, no adjustments to the infrastructure are necessary.
“The mobile robots could be perfectly integrated into our processes, including integration into the SAP system. The rapid commissioning helped us to quickly benefit from the advantages in terms of efficiency, costs and safety.”
The project
The mobile robots enabled a rapid improvement in intralogistics thanks to fast commissioning and seamless integration into the existing SAP system. If necessary, the fleet can be easily expanded in the future.
Jörg Lanz, Sales