Electricity and Control August 2020

INDUSTRY 4.0 + IIOT

Made-to-order production with mobile robots

VOLA, a Danish manufacturer of luxury sanitary and kitchen fittings, has opened a new factory that incorporates a fleet of nine mobile robots from Omron.This represents one of the most ambitious industrial mobile robot projects to date in the Nordic countries.The new robot fleet works side-by-side with people, and is controlled by an advanced fleet management system.

W ith over 50 years’ experience, VOLA is one of Denmark’s leading manufacturers of high-quality sanitary fittings, with product lines such as bath- room mixers and kitchen taps. Due to increasing market demand for a wide range of product variants, the company decided to expand its plant by 5 500 m². This area includes a new high-bay warehouse, an assembly hall and facilities for the delivery of goods. VOLA commissioned a fleet of nine Omron LD robots. These have replaced roller conveyors, leading to a more flexible production and logistics set-up that matches the company’s single-piece production process, in which everything is produced to order.

Peder Nygaard, Factory Director at VOLA, explains: “Roller conveyors are really efficient, but I don‘t know what our production set-up will look like in ten years. If we in- stalled more conveyors in the production line, we could quickly compromise the flexibility on which we pride our- selves. That’s why we’ve chosen the autonomous robots from Omron, as these are much more flexible.” Seamless control The robots have been tasked with transporting components and finished items back and forth between the high-bay warehouse and assembly hall. Omron Enterprise Manager is used to control the robots. This is a unique fleet man-

Omron LD robots have replaced roller conveyors, leading to a more flexible production and logistics set-up.

4 Electricity + Control AUGUST 2020