WAGO is the lead­ing sup­plier of elec­tri­cal inter­con­nec­tion, automa­tion and inter­face elec­tronic tech­nolo­gies. In April 2023, SOTO began oper­at­ing at the head­quar­ters in Min­den thanks to the close col­lab­o­ra­tion with Junghein­rich and Mag­a­zino. The mobile robot sup­plies WAGO’s injec­tion mould­ing pro­duc­tion with small load car­ri­ers (KLT) and trans­ports them autonomously between the ware­house and pro­duc­tion. The goal is to use SOTO to make logis­tics processes within pro­duc­tion more effi­cient and safer.

Read now how WAGO is har­ness­ing the ben­e­fits of SOTO:

• Auto­mated mate­r­ial flow between injec­tion mould­ing machine and warehouse
• KLT exchanges on cost-effec­tive plat­forms, even at dif­fer­ent heights
• Mate­r­ial track­ing with the help of barcodes
• Autonomous nav­i­ga­tion with intel­li­gent controls
• Safe inter­ac­tion with peo­ple and other machines

A clear focus on growth and future viability

As an inter­na­tion­ally active com­pany based in Ger­many, WAGO aims to posi­tion itself for growth and the future.

Issues of increas­ing effi­ciency are addressed with tech­ni­cal and auto­mated solu­tions, among other things. As part of the pro­gres­sion towards greater automa­tion, the trial deploy­ment of the mobile robot SOTO com­menced in April 2023 in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Junghein­rich and its sub­sidiary Magazino.

WAGO has been look­ing into the intro­duc­tion of a dri­ver­less trans­port sys­tem for some time in order to imple­ment the mate­r­ial flow to and from the injec­tion mould­ing machines using small load car­ri­ers. The robot SOTO was chosen.

It was imple­mented into the cor­re­spond­ing logis­tics processes in a multi-stage process. Together with the part­ners Junghein­rich and Mag­a­zino, the use case was iter­a­tively expanded and finally suc­cess­fully rolled out to a dou­ble row of injec­tion mould­ing machines.

Chal­lenge: Ensur­ing smooth KLT exchange at the injec­tion mould­ing machine

The core chal­lenge for WAGO were the direct machine con­nec­tion as well as the smooth and sim­ple exchance of the KLT at the injec­tion mould­ing machine.

The SOTO sys­tem proved to be a pio­neer­ing solu­tion. SOTO’s active grip­ping tech­nol­ogy using con­veyor belt grip­pers allows the robot to inter­act with low-cost plat­forms for chang­ing the KLTs, thus enabling eco­nom­i­cal scal­ing to a large num­ber of machines.

A WAGO-Con­troller on the machine records the KLT fill lev­els. The con­trol sys­tem com­mu­ni­cates with the Junghein­rich Logis­tics Inter­face and uses it to request a KLT exchange. Once SOTO receives a trans­port order, it nav­i­gates to the machine, grabs the full KLT and places an empty KLT in the same posi­tion. With the help of bar­codes, mate­r­ial track­ing is ensured at all times.

Safe inter­ac­tion with man and machine

The robot nav­i­gates autonomously through the pro­duc­tion sec­tions with the help of laser scan­ners and 3D cam­era tech­nol­ogy and manoeu­vres around obsta­cles so that it can work par­al­lel to humans.

The large back­pack allows for the stor­age of a vari­ety of small load car­ri­ers, which in turn means that fewer vehi­cles are needed in the area over­all. Using  SLAM tech­nol­ogy (Simul­ta­ne­ous Local­iza­tion & Map­ping Process), the sen­sors not only ensure cor­rect local­iza­tion in the pro­duc­tion hall but also ensure safe oper­a­tion for man and machine at all times.

Clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion takes the team along on the journey.

WAGO is prepar­ing for the chal­lenges of the future with SOTO — It was impor­tant for WAGO to involve its employ­ees in the process of inte­grat­ing SOTO. Trans­parency and open com­mu­ni­ca­tion were empha­sized right from the start. Dur­ing train­ing ses­sions, the empha­sis was not only on how SOTO would alter cur­rent work­flows but also on iden­ti­fy­ing which exist­ing prob­lems it would address and which issues it should not tackle: “It’s explic­itly not about peo­ple los­ing their jobs. Ulti­mately, we want to use robot­ics to help peo­ple in their daily work.” (Tor­ben Epp­mann, Tech­ni­cal Process Engi­neer at WAGO)

Test, eval­u­ate, opti­mise, scale

The suc­cess­ful test­ing of the SOTO sys­tem in one area of injec­tion mold­ing pro­duc­tion pro­vides the foun­da­tion for expand­ing automa­tion to other parts of the pro­duc­tion process. WAGO is thus not only reaf­firm­ing its com­mit­ment to advanced tech­nolo­gies but is also posi­tion­ing itself even bet­ter for the chal­lenges of the future.