Mobile robots in the pharmaceutical industry

Medical technology requires a special degree of efficiency and precision in the production of parts intended for medical purposes. At the same time, the industry faces increasing demands due to the competition from the global market and increasing customer expectations. To meet the market demands, it is vital to keep producing high-quality products flexibly and with a short time of delivery. In order to succeed, manufacturers need to use their resources efficiently and design reliable operational processes that support their production. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) such as those from Mobile Industrial Robots are frequently used exactly for this purpose; the dynamic and flexible technology enables companies to automate their internal material transportation in a simple way.  

Modern production halls are characterized by being dynamic and agile. In-house transports are constantly taking place: semi-finished goods are brought from warehouse to production lines, finished goods are brought from production lines to warehouse, and items are transported between departments. Skilled workers spend much of their day just moving parts from A to B, and usually they must interrupt their actual work in order to do so, which leads to unnecessary standstill on machines. For companies in all industries, this means a great loss of efficiency. AMRs offer enormous potential for optimizing the intralogistics. The AMRs are flexible, easy to program, and collaborative, which are features that suit the modern production processes particularly well.    

Human and robot working side by side

While traditional automated guided vehicles (AGVs) can only be operated using physically mounted guides like magnetic stripes or rails, AMRs like the MIR robots provide a simple and quickly deployable alternative. With built-in sensors and cameras and sophisticated software, the AMRs can identify its surroundings and take the most efficient route to its destination, safely avoiding obstacles and people, which allow the robots to work safely next to humans.

The robots from MiR are extremely flexible, and depending of the requirements, the MiR robots can be equipped with different top modules such as shelves, conveyor belts, robotic arms or a hook that can tow carts up to 500 kg. Therefore, the AMRs can be customized to individual company needs, regardless if small parts such as surgical instruments need to be transported or larger product components of medical devices must be transported between production lines.   

The collaborative AMRs are often extremely user-friendly, and can be programmed without any prior programming experience. Connected via Wi-Fi, the robots employees can easily access the user-friendly robot interface from any computer or mobile device.  

Companies of all sizes, even those who previously thought that a mobile automation solution was too expensive or too difficult to integrate, makes it easier to decide on mobile robotics. Because costs for specially trained specialists and for an adjustment of infrastructures are eliminated.