When Mölnlycke Health Care, a world-leading manufacturer of single-use wound care and surgical products, decided to build a new manufacturing facility in Brunswick, Maine, it knew the building would have to be outfitted with best-in-class materials handling equipment. To maintain its production requirements, including cleanroom standards on its production floor, the company selected an integrated system that would efficiently transport and palletize SKUs. The new system begins at the end of Mölnlycke’s two manufacturing lines. As finished products are packaged, the cartons are sealed through an automatic taper. A label is then applied and the carton continues up a plastic…
Clearpath Robotics, a leading provider of self-driving vehicle solutions, has announced the completion of a $30 million investment led by iNovia Capital with participation from Caterpillar Ventures, GE Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, RRE Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. Clearpath will use the funding to grow the company’s industrial division, OTTO Motors. Clearpath launched OTTO Motors in 2015 to focus on self-driving vehicles for material transport inside manufacturing and warehouse operations. “Factories operate like small indoor cities, complete with roads, traffic, intersections and pedestrians,” said Matt Rendall, CEO and co-founder of Clearpath. “Unlike city streets, a factory floor is a controlled environment,…
A wave of automation has washed over the medical technology industry worldwide in recent years, even in countries with lower labor costs than Denmark. This is a challenge that Elos—one of Europe’s leading development and production partners for medical technology products and components—is now ready for. Staff previously walked an average of more than 4.5 miles a day, while pushing goods on a cart between departments. Now, a mobile robot provides a faster, steadier flow of materials through production, eliminating downtime and latency. The robot runs continuously in a fixed route within the facility. On an annual basis, the robot…
As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of cosmetics, skincare, hair care and hair coloring products, L’Oreal operates a number of different types of distribution centers, ranging from facilities that primarily handle full pallets to case and piece picking operations. Each has its own set of demands and approaches to order fulfillment. “What’s impacting our operations the most is the change in order profiles due to the rise of e-commerce,” says Erik Rodriguez, director of supply chain for L’Oreal Americas. “The sheer volume of orders has increased, but the lines per order has decreased. Additionally, there’s pressure from our retail…
An ongoing question among supply chain stakeholders, when it comes to global e-commerce bellwether Amazon, continues to be just how far it will spread its wings in terms of expanding its logistics and supply chain operations and processes. Regardless of what people say or think, there are very real signs that Amazon is not going to sit on the sidelines and let logistics come to them, as, conversely, in many cases, it is really coming to logistics. Two quick examples of this include its 2012 $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems, a developer of mobile-robotic solutions that automate e-Commerce order…
Universal Robots, a Teradyne company and a global leader in the collaborative robot market, has named Jürgen von Hollen president effective immediately. He succeeds Enrico Krog Iversen who relinquished the post in June 2016 to pursue other interests. Von Hollen was most recently the executive president of Bilfinger SE, a leading international engineering and services company, in its engineering solutions division, which includes the automation and controls business, in Mannheim, Germany. In his role at Bilfinger, he was responsible for a global staff of nearly 10,000 and annual sales in excess of €1.0 billion. Von Hollen began his career with…
Any lingering doubts that the government wholeheartedly backs the development of autonomous vehicles was put to rest this week with the official announcement of a set of policies that touched on guidelines for vehicle performance as well as safety concerns. Jeffrey Zients, director of the National Economic Council, and Anthony Foxx, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, released the 116-page Federal Automated Vehicles Policy along with a 15-point safety standard intended to encourage and aid in the design and development of autonomous vehicles. The agencies also urged manufacturers of the new generation of driverless vehicles to be transparent in…
As the processes, equipment and overall strategies of distribution centers and manufacturing plants are continuously responding to the ever-changing global marketplace, one part of the materials handling process has remained practically unchanged: dock equipment. However, a shift is occurring as DC and plant owners are beginning to focus on how to improve the effectiveness of their dock areas. To help employees as they transport products from docks to trailers, some companies are incorporating loading and unloading robotics. Others are focusing on their manual dock products by replacing yellow steel guard railings with new types of barriers and installing new dock…
