Made-to-order production with an advanced fleet of mobile robots

VOLA, a Danish manufacturer of luxury sanitary and kitchen fittings, has opened a new factory that incorporates a fleet of nine mobile robots from Omron.

This represents one of the most ambitious industrial mobile robot projects in the Nordics. The new robot fleet works side-by-side with people, and is controlled by an advanced fleet management system.

With over 50 years of experience, VOLA is one of Denmark’s leading manufacturers of high-quality sanitary fittings, with product lines such as bathroom mixers and kitchen taps. Dueto increasing market demand for a wide range of product variants, VOLA decided to expand its plant by 5,500 square meters. This area includes a new high-bay warehouse, anassembly hall and facilities for the delivery of goods.

In one of the most ambitious projects involving industrial mobile robots in Northern Europe, VOLA commissioned a fleet of nine Omron LD robots. These have replaced rollerconveyors, leading to a more flexible production and logistics set-up that matches the company’s single-piece production process, in which everything is produced to order.

Peder Nygaard, factory director at VOLA, explains: “Roller conveyors are really efficient, but I don‘t know what our production set-up will look like in ten years. If we installedmore conveyors in the production line, we could quickly compromise the flexibility on which we pride ourselves. That’s why we’ve chosen the autonomous robots from Omron, as these are much more flexible.”