With hot orders and cold manpower, MiR AMR provides automation solutions for the "hot and cold" electronics manufacturing industry

Local electronic manufacturing companies have long faced two major challenges: "cold" and "hot". The "hot" is the continued hot development of China's electronic manufacturing industry. According to the data of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology [China Academy of Information and Communications Technology "Electronic Industry Operation Data Report in the First Half of 2022"], the production of the local electronic industry has maintained rapid growth. In the first half of 2022, the added value of electronic manufacturing above designated size increased by 10.2%, making it the fastest growing industry among the 28 major manufacturing industries. Rapid growth means development opportunities, but also means pressure to deliver orders.

The "cold" challenge that the electronics manufacturing industry has long faced is the continued sluggishness of the talent market. It is difficult to recruit, employ and retain workers for repetitive tasks on the production line, which in turn gradually affects production efficiency and even the rate of order delivery.

Multiple MiR AMRs working together

A foreign-funded semiconductor company in Shanghai is also facing the same dilemma of alternating hot and cold development. With its business scale continuing to grow rapidly but talent resources becoming increasingly tight, the company has decisively started the pace of automation transformation and introduced a total of six MiR AMRs to optimize the high-frequency, low-value and particularly boring material transportation work for manual operations, improve the production line logistics process, and reduce the reliance on manual labor for this task.

The production director of the semiconductor company said: "We have long faced challenges in recruiting personnel from the society. In the past, material transportation work was mainly done by manual handling. The task was simple but arduous, and there was also a certain risk of work-related injuries during the handling process. Therefore, the turnover of personnel in related positions was very large and unstable. In this context, we began to think about automating the transformation of material handling work."

MiR AMR: autonomous navigation, autonomous elevator use, autonomous floor crossing

The semiconductor company deployed six MiR AMRs in the "packaging workshop" and "material workshop". The packaging workshop includes two MiR100s and one MiR200. The material workshop has three MiR100s. Currently, the AMRs in the packaging workshop have entered the formal operation stage, working in shifts 24 hours a day, helping the factory complete the storage of tens of millions of finished products and the distribution of semi-finished products every day.

The vice president of the semiconductor company said: "Our Shanghai factory has been in operation for more than 20 years, and each workshop and department is located on different floors. In the early stage of deployment, we also investigated traditional AGV solutions. However, AGV is limited by its track operation.

The existing robot mode cannot meet our requirements for cross-floor transportation, so we decided to use MiR's AMR technology. In the future, even if we need to adjust the robot's task path, we only need to draw and set it on the computer, without laying tracks. "

In the packaging workshop, MiR AMR can autonomously complete the entire process from loading to unloading and returning empty, with five steps, without human intervention:

MiR AMR autonomous navigation in operation

Step 1: Material packaging and loading completed

Step 2: Wait for the transport vehicle to park in the parking space (VL-make)

Step 3: After the task is given, the MiR AMR moves and navigates autonomously, stops, and automatically picks up the cage truck through the top module device.

Step 4: MiR AMR automatically opens and closes the workshop lift door through built-in programs and signals, automatically takes the dedicated elevator to travel between different floors, and transports materials and finished products to designated locations and finished product warehouses respectively.

Step 5: The AMR that has completed material transportation picks up the empty cage truck and returns to the packaging workshop to continue the next batch of tasks

MiR AMR brings triple optimization of labor, efficiency and scenarios

Since its deployment, MiR AMR has brought optimization to this semiconductor company in many ways. First, AMR makes up for the lack of manpower efficiently and safely. AMR is easy to operate, ready to use, and has limited impact on the operating environment.

The deployment has effectively solved the problem of manpower shortage in material transportation. In addition, MiR AMR has high safety standards and can work safely with workers in complex environments.

Secondly, the efficiency is improved. MiR AMR can autonomously navigate and transport across floors, greatly improving the speed and efficiency of material transportation. MiR AMR can autonomously plan and adjust routes, avoid obstacles, automatically call elevators, open and close doors, and transport materials across floors, which is well adapted to the company's factory environment. The three robots work together and divide the work, ensuring the possibility of 24-hour uninterrupted material transportation tasks.

In addition, the successful practice of MiR AMR will also actively enable a wider range of automation transformation scenarios. The semiconductor company's automation will not be limited to the "packaging workshop" and "material workshop". With the practical experience of material transportation in the initial packaging workshop, they will also review and explore the advancement of logistics automation in more scenarios to better build for a wider range of deployments and fleet management.

The semiconductor company's production operations manager said: "In the past, heavy objects were pushed and transported by manpower, which inevitably caused bumps and collisions. However, since the deployment of MiR AMR, daily operations have been smooth and safe, and no work-related accidents have occurred. This is also the first issue we consider when selecting relevant technologies, namely safety. MiR AMR can meet our task requirements very well. In addition, six MiR AMRs complete the workload that once required 12 people in the morning and evening shifts every day, successfully solving our pain point of staff shortage."

In the future, the semiconductor company looks forward to learning about the application of MiR AMR technology in more scenarios and cases in the electronics industry, constantly exploring new deployment scenarios, leveraging MiR fleet management software to achieve large-scale deployment, and plans to continuously promote automation transformation by optimizing the adaptability of the factory.

About Mobile Industrial Robots

Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) is committed to developing and selling industry-leading Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs). AMR technology manages internal logistics quickly, easily and cost-effectively, allowing employees to move on to more valuable work. Currently, hundreds of customers from the manufacturing, logistics and healthcare sectors around the world have introduced MiR's innovative robots. These companies range in size from large multinational groups to medium-sized local companies from all over the world. As a leader in the global mobile robot market, MiR has established a distribution network in more than 60 countries and regions, and has regional offices in New York, San Diego, Singapore, Frankfurt, Barcelona, ​​Tokyo and Shanghai. Founded by experienced Danish robotics industry professionals, MiR is headquartered in Odense, Denmark, and was acquired by Teradyne, a world-renowned supplier of automatic test equipment, in 2018.