OTTO Motors
Assembly Line
GE Healthcare Achieves Lean Efficiency With Autonomous Mobile Robots
Germain likes the OTTOs because they get material where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. This is essential, as the AMRs must deliver parts for more than 2,000 equipment repairs per week. Material flow efficiency is improved, notes Germait, because the robots enable pull-type supply chain management, where material movement is based on actual demand. However, material handling is not standardized because the facility receives different-size parts every day, and the parts often need to be delivered to different repair cells.
Hundreds of technicians work in the West Milwaukee facility, in repair cells that are 40 percent smaller since implementing AMRs. Downsizing the cells has also enabled GEH to increase its productive floor space by 66 percent and greatly improve throughput per square foot.