MiR eBook: The FMCG market is poised for recovery, and AMRs empower the three major operating processes in the FMCG industry

MiR eBook: The FMCG market is poised for recovery, and AMRs empower the three major operating processes in the FMCG industry

March 29, 2023, Shanghai – The development theme of China’s consumer goods market in 2023 is undoubtedly “expanding domestic demand”. Driven by policies and a huge market base of 1.4 billion people, local consumer goods companies are poised to restart and grow. In the context of “new retail”, the fast-moving consumer goods industry is facing higher production requirements. From smart manufacturing to smart logistics, companies are leveraging automation technology to embrace huge business opportunities.

Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR), a global leader in the mobile robot market, today released the e-book "How Efficient Internal Logistics Helps Consumer Packaged Goods and Fast Moving Consumer Goods Companies Improve Competitiveness", focusing on the logistics pain points of the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries, and sharing how autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), a flexible, efficient and safe automation method, can help FMCG and CPG sectors optimize material handling processes and agilely meet consumers' ever-changing demands and extreme preference for speed.

Three factors drive the automation transformation of the retail and fast-moving consumer goods industry

According to the 2022 McKinsey Global Industrial Robot Survey, the retail and consumer goods industries will invest the most in automation in the next five years, with 23% of respondents in the industry saying they plan to invest more than $500 million. There are three driving factors behind the retail and FMCG industry's huge investment in automation upgrades. The first is the labor shortage and pressure to reduce costs and increase efficiency faced by the industry; secondly, as consumables, FMCG products have a high frequency of consumption and a short turnover cycle, which naturally means high requirements for speed; in addition, in the e-commerce era, consumer demand is becoming increasingly refined and diversified, which puts further demands on production agility and delivery cycles.

Safe, intelligent and flexible AMR full-link empowers the three major operation processes of the fast-moving consumer goods industry

To meet the above challenges, the FMCG industry hopes to use robots to assist humans in material handling, packaging, quality inspection and other tasks. However, traditional AGVs require laying wires or magnetic strips as "tracks", which are limited to fixed routes. Expanding the work area is expensive and time-consuming, which brings high deployment costs, prompting many FMCG companies to turn their attention to more intelligent and flexible AMR autonomous mobile robots, using AMR full-link to enable the three major operation processes.

• Operation process 1 : Transport incoming components to the production line. The fast-moving consumer goods industry has long used manual forklifts to transport materials. However, forklifts are heavy and controlled by manual split-second decisions. Once an accident occurs, it is very likely to cause serious harm to workers. AMR is a safer alternative, equipped with an integrated pallet lift or a specially designed cart solution, which can automatically transport pallets or small batches of components to the production line, and can autonomously and safely avoid obstacles in crowded areas and dynamic environments. MiR AMR has an independent safety system and control system. According to EN 1525, the most applicable safety standard for AMR, the safety function of MiR AMR reaches the PLd level specified by the EN ISO 13849 performance level, which means that the probability of a dangerous failure in the system is equivalent to less than once in 20 years.

• Operation process 2: Improve efficiency in production links such as packaging and quality inspection. Packaging is an important link in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, and its operation efficiency is highly concerned by enterprises. Take Infinitus, a leading manufacturer of Chinese herbal tonics, as an example. Infinitus originally planned to install AGV to improve productivity, but later abandoned this plan and switched to AMR because it took too long to lay the rails. Infinitus deployed three MiR200 autonomous mobile robots on the packaging production line to carry more than ten kinds of materials involved in the packaging process. The entire process did not require any modification to the original factory layout, and quickly increased productivity to 3.5 times the previous level. In addition, due to the special nature of fields such as food processing, the food industry has very high requirements for quality inspection and traceability. By using AMR in conjunction with the collaborative robot on the top, samples can be directly extracted from the real-time production line and sent to the warehouse or laboratory for analysis, effectively improving the processing efficiency of quality samples.

[Photo: MiR 200 robots put into use in Infinitus packaging production line]

• Operation process 3: Assisting with the “last mile” of palletizing at the end of the production line. The flexibility of AMR enables it to be easily integrated into the palletizing system. Many palletizing and material handling companies view AMR as a “disruptor” for their business, using AMR to gradually replace conveyor belts for pallet transportation. MiR not only helps customers integrate AMR into existing palletizers, but also works with palletizing system manufacturers to provide one-stop solutions. For example, MiR and the Dutch palletizing company CSi Palletising have collaborated to integrate CSi’s palletizers with the MiR1350 autonomous mobile robot to help the fast-moving consumer goods industry achieve full automation of heavy pallet material transportation. This solution transports pallets to the conveyor belt or the feed inlet of the pallet packaging machine, and can be seamlessly connected to the customer’s ERP/WMS system.

[Photo: CSi Palletising’s palletizer is integrated with the MiR1350 autonomous mobile robot]

Throughout the entire process, MiR's AMRs can always autonomously plan and adjust routes in real time, and flexibly respond to site changes and task changes; in terms of operation, MiR AMRs can be operated through web control and smart devices, and the graphical programming interface is very intuitive, so employees can get started directly without programming experience; in terms of collaboration, as AMRs are increasingly moving towards large-scale deployment, MiR's self-developed fleet management software MiR Fleet can manage up to 100 AMRs to work together at the same time, and carry out 7x24 hours of multi-site delivery. In addition, through the MiRGo platform, companies can also obtain dozens of out-of-the-box solutions and hundreds of applications such as frames/racks, traction devices, and lifting devices that MiR partners continue to develop, quickly realizing the extension of AMR functions.

In recent years, MiR has developed rapidly in the Chinese market, and its AMR products have been widely used in many fields such as fast-moving consumer goods, food and beverages, electronics, automobiles, and medical health. In the future, MiR will also launch industry e-books for various fields, sharing MiR's insights based on the specific scenarios and pain points of each industry.