Eurotherm, part of the Watlow Corporate Group, is involved in industrial automation and is a leader in the manufacture of electronic control and measurement instruments such as power controllers, process recorders and controllers. Eurotherm's growth strategy includes the automation and robotisation of the company's plants. One such project is the automation of the transport of finished products using the MiR250 mobile robot at a factory in Poland.
- The main motivation for implementing the robot was to improve ergonomics on the production line and eliminate manual transport. Physical transport is hard and monotonous work. It is often routine, repetitive work, which can negatively affect the employees' level of focus and attentiveness - says Marcin Brokowski, Eurotherm production engineer.
The use of the AMR autonomous mobile robot to transport the finished product to the shipping department area has increased the efficiency of the process itself thanks to its repeatability and speed. At the same time, employees' time has been freed up, allowing them to perform tasks of high value to the company, such as picking, packing and shipping complete orders.
- The MiR250 operates in a two-shift system, carrying out different missions from among 12 pre-programmed tasks, depending on current production needs. The missions are launched directly by the production line workers. On average, the robot travels a distance of 8 to 10 km per day, delivering around a thousand finished products to the dispatch department. The MiR250 moves autonomously thanks to built-in navigation systems and safety sensors. As a result, it moves among people and other objects along paths, without additional fences - says Izabela Należnik, production engineer at Eurotherm.
- Eurotherm was very aware of the AMR technology and its benefits from the very beginning. The robot allowed us to increase efficiency by eliminating the manual and time-consuming process of transporting the finished product from the production line to the dispatch department - says Maciej Otto, project manager, industrial robot engineer, Astor.
An additional benefit is the improved safety by eliminating forklifts on the production floor. Because each MiR robot is equipped with advanced laser scanning techniques, 3D cameras, embedded sensors and powerful software, this configuration enables the robots to analyse the surrounding environment along the route, effectively avoid obstacles and dynamically plan and adjust routes in real time.
