Gibotech optimizes internal logistics in Iceland

A factory in Iceland has a floor area of 10,000 m². The facility consists of two main halls where welding, assembly, testing, and packing are carried out by cross-functional production teams. And this is where GiboMove into the picture. Going forward, this mobile robot will be responsible for transporting boxes around the Icelandic factory.

From the outset, the goal of the project has been to find an efficient and suitable solution for material transport at the factory, with the aim of automating all material transport using mobile robots. In addition, the company hopes to reduce transport costs by automating the process.

The project is a perfect fit for our new solution, GiboMove. All items that need to be transported around the factory are placed in standard trays, so it was relatively easy to customize the conveyor belt on top of the mobile robot and the pick-up/drop-off stations.

Thomas Skovgaard, Sales Engineer at Gibotech

All components picked from the central warehouse are placed in standard-size plastic bins and delivered to the various assembly cells. Orders are triggered in SAP by the assembly team leaders and processed by warehouse staff in the room. Before the mobile robot took over, an operator delivered all the boxes from the central warehouse to the assembly areas in approximately 10 cycles per day.

The standard boxes measure 600×400×170 mm and typically weigh 5–10 kg. In some cases, there may be heavier components that increase the weight to 20–30 kg. The boxes are labeled on the front with a sticker containing information about the request, assembly order, and delivery location. During normal operation, the operator delivers 20–30 picking boxes to the assembly cells each day. A task that will now be performed by an Omron mobile robot.

"The dimensions and weight of the crates made Omron’s LD-90 the obvious choice for the solution, as it is flexible, easy to program, and modular, which also meets the customer’s desire to expand the solution in the future," says Thomas Skovgaard.

Flexible production just got a lot easier

GiboMove part of Gibotech’s initiative, GiboSmartSolutions, which was developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

GiboSmartSolutions primarily GiboSmartSolutions industrial solutions, many of which are modular, allowing customers to purchase a single robot cell or combine multiple modules into a comprehensive solution—for example, with a cobot or CNC machine—or, as in this case, with the option to expand the system with even more mobile robots.

- During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have focused our efforts on compiling and integrating the company’s experience gained over many years.  The goal has been to make the solutions visible and easy to understand, but at the same time not to oversimplify them, as in some cases these are quite complex technological solutions. And we hope that by bringing these solutions together into a single concept, it will inspire our customers in their next automation project, says Kenneth Pedersen, Project Sales Manager at Gibotech.