The production lines are not supplied with packaging material in time, the finished goods should have been delivered to the next station long ago, and pallet parking spaces are also once again not respected. Alfred Jungmayr, Operations Manager for the Baked Goods Division at Spitz, is familiar with these everyday problems in intralogistics processes that do not run smoothly. But together with his colleagues, he has put an end to these challenges. With whose help? With the help of AGILOX!
“Our requirement for a competent manufacturer of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) was that it should fit smoothly into our existing infrastructure. After all, we have to supply 14 production lines with packaging material and transport finished goods from one station to the next. What didn’t work before now works without any problems with AGILOX,” says Alfred Jungmayr.
As an Austrian family business with a history, Spitz combines a wide variety of product and production areas – beverages, confectionery and baked goods, sweet and sour products – under one roof, making it a flexible and broad-based partner for the individual needs of its customers. In doing so, the food producer bridges the gap between tradition and innovation every day. What unites the approximately 800 employees? A common, lived mission. Always in focus? Customer orientation, the pursuit of sustainable developments and the use of new technologies. In the latter strategy, the company relies on AGILOX.
AGILOX stands for the development of intelligent Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), the revolutionary advancement of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). Our mission is to enable our customers to take their intralogistics to a new level with the help of our products. To achieve this, we pursue our philosophy of offering our customers an easy-to-use product based on the latest technology. The fact that not only the mechanics, electronics, automation and navigation, but also the software is produced under one roof is for us the logical step towards an Autonomous Mobile Robots system that is ahead of its time, conceived from scratch. Since we can offer our customers all components from a single source, we can also respond to their individual needs. Thus, the initial requirement in the cooperation with Spitz was to develop our own operating program that every employee could use intuitively. Thanks to our unique AGILOX X-Swarm Technology, it was then possible to commission the two vehicles on site in just a few hours. “We were amazed when the first pallets were transported by the AGILOX vehicle just a few hours later,” Alfred Jungmayr proudly recounts.
“At the beginning, our employees were skeptical about the project because they were afraid that it would cut down on employees. But then we explained to them that the two AGILOX vehicles are not so much competitors as supporters. And then, on the day the AMRs were put into operation, the employees had an almost tumultuous argument about who would be allowed to operate the equipment first,” smiles Alfred Jungmayr. Today, the two intralogistics robots – affectionately named Ronny and Gerhard – not only take care of the removal of finished boards, but also ensure the supply of packaging material to the production lines.
What sets AMRs from AGILOX apart from conventional AGVs is the extensive basic intelligence of our logistics robots, our AGILOX X-Swarm Technology. Our products are developed for customers who, on the one hand, need a robust, reliable industrial robot but, on the other hand, want to do without complicated equipment such as master computers or navigation aids. Using a 2D laser scanner, the AGILOX independently draws a map of the room, which only needs to be fine-tuned by the commissioning engineer in a few steps. This means that our AMRs can be put into operation in a very short time via Plug & Perform. This advantage is also appreciated by our customers, as Alfred Jungmayr confirms: “Our employees can independently create, move or remove receiving and storage locations for pallets. The fact that this cannot be taken for granted is shown by the solutions of our competitors, which very often require an enormous amount of programming for commissioning. No one can hold a candle to an AGILOX so quickly.”