The GoPal solution at TRECO
TRECO is a Danish company specializing in project- and customer specific metal production, and a global manufacturer of customized postal products. The company has always been interested in innovative technology so when they came across the GoPal solution, they quickly calculated an ROI.
Photo: Robotize.
The result of the calculated ROI was an eye-opener and TRECO immediately decided to deploy a GoPal solution – a solution which has since become an integral and important part of the company’s internal logistics.
The challenge
TRECO has always been interested in new and innovative technology, so when they learned about the GoPal autonomous mobile robots, they decided to do a quick ROI calculation.
TRECO discovered that more than 7 hours per day were spent by simply having one employee pick materials in the warehouse and then manually transport the materials from the warehouse to the production line (often only to return with an empty pallet) - while experiencing various interruptions along the way.
The conclusion was clear: with a calculated ROI of less than 18 months, a GoPal solution would not only automate these tasks, but would also enable TRECO to transfer one full-time employee to perform more important and value-adding tasks within the company.
“For the first couple of weeks after deployment, the robot was definitely the main topic at lunch. Some employees thought it was exciting, some were a little anxious. But if you ask them today, they’ll tell you that we cannot do without th GoPal solution. It has simply become integral part of our logistics operations”, says Nicolaj B. Andersen, COO at TRECO.
The solution
TRECO decided to deploy a GoPal 400 AMR, ten pallet stations, three pallet conveyor stations and multiple Call Buttons to automate the following tasks:
1. Transport materials from the warehouse to the production line (consisting of three robot welding machines).
2. Transport empty packaging from the production line to the warehouse. When the pallet is fully loaded, the production line operator calls the robot using the GoPal Call Button. The robot arrives and transports the pallet from the production line to the warehouse.
Furthermore, as TRECO runs three production shifts, but only a single warehouse day shift, the GoPal solution provided additional benefits. Before automating their internal pallet transport, the warehouse day shift had to manually transport all the materials required for the evening and night shifts and place all the fully pre-loaded pallets close to the production line. That took up a lot of space and the pallets had to be constantly rearranged for access.
So, as part of their GoPal solution, TRECO decided to install two pallet station buffers: one at the warehouse and one at the production line. This means that the warehouse shift can now simply place all the pre-loaded pallets (for the evening and night shifts) on the warehouse pallet station buffer. When a pallet is empty at the production line, the robot transports the empty pallet to the warehouse, picks up a new fully loaded pallet and transports it to the production line. All through the evening and nights shifts.
This way, the GoPal solution automatically ensures that the required production materials are always available at the production line and without production staff having to enter the warehouse.
“A funny thing is that the robot in itself also sends a clear message to the employees: that the warehouse is off-limits for non-warehouse staff. Previously, non-warehouse staff would sometimes enter the storage area, pick items, but forget to register them. This is not an issue anymore”, says Nicolaj B. Andersen.
- KCP
