FORVIA INCREASES LOGISTICS PRODUCTIVITY WITH FLEET OF MiR ROBOTS
FORVIA Faurecia is a global leader in the automotive technology industry. With 266 industrial sites, 39 R&D centres and 114,000 employees in 35 countries, Faurecia is a top ten global automotive supplier. As one of the manufacturing facilities in the Czech Republic, Faurecia Clean Mobility Písek focuses on exhaust systems production for a wide range of customers, mainly Volvo, Daimler and PSA. The site in Písek has been in operation since 2006 and currently employs around 500 people.
In order to continually increase its competitiveness, Faurecia Clean Mobility has been running different digital projects, including installations of mobile robots technology in logistics operations. In addition to Písek, the mobile robots technology has been implemented on other production sites in the Czech Republic, France, Italy and Portugal.
There are 14 MiR robots deployed on the Písek site. 7 of them are heavy duty MiR600s robots which work in the finished goods area, bringing empty pallets to the assembly lines and picking up full pallets to the logistics area. The second area, where MiR250 robots operate, is supplement of components from warehouse to assembly lines. The robots in the plant work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, covering all three shifts operations.
MiR Fleet software is used to organise missions and together with using internal script helps to optimise the logistics flow to the lines and between the lines. All the communication with doors, gates, the strapping machine etc. is fully automatic without any need of operators’ assistance.
“We are now operating 14 robots in everyday use,” said Benjamin Paillusson, PC&L Improvement Leader in Faurecia Clean Mobility Písek. “As with any other automation technology, it needs some supervision, however the operation of MiR robots is very smooth and fully autonomous. From time to time, we just need to bring an improvement, but basically the technology does not need any human intervention.”
Instead of heavy tasks of manual loading and unloading materials and finished goods, employees on the shop floor can now focus on more valuable activities like supervision, being in the production, or programming robots!
“The MiR interface is really user friendly, the way of building mission is very easy made through building blocks instead of code lines. Thus, it is understandable enough even for people without previous programming experience,” added Benjamin.
Return on investment less than 2 years
MiR mobile robots provide the customer with full autonomy enabling the set up of new routes easily, without the need for additional magnetic tapes or other external guidance necessary when using other intralogistic technologies. The MiR robots and employees can work effectively together, as the robots are collaborative they can recognise when humans are on the shop floor and they can stop or bypass people, which are around without decreasing the robots’ efficiency because the robot avoids bottlenecks..
“Mobile robots help us to bring more efficiency to the shop floor and make our production processes more stable and reliable, especially important is stability for operating all three shifts. What we appreciate most about the robots is their autonomy, as they move freely on the shop floor without the need for specialist equipment,” added Martin Horáček.
The benefits of deploying MiR mobile robots span into three main areas. The first is improved safety by eliminating forklifts on the shop floor. The second one is increased productivity in all areas of operations. And last but not least, it is return on investment. The implementation of MiR robots into Faurecia Písek have resulted in a payback of less than 2 years!
