As part of a clear industrial strategy, the company has established a global network of technology centers that demonstrate the functions and benefits of highly automated production, including flexible robotics, to customers and interested parties in a practical way. Based on the central Automation Technology Center in Barcelona and the competence centers specifically for robotics integration (e.g. in Dortmund), customer- and industry-oriented innovation centers have been set up in recent years to provide concrete proof of feasibility.

"The proximity to the automotive and packaging industry and to mechanical and plant engineering in general is particularly important to us. After all, it's about trying things out together in practice, seeing whether something can work and if so, how - in many cases, the end result is a proof of concept of how progress can be tangibly implemented in production," comments Lucian Dold, General Manager Marketing Product and Solution for EMEA at Omron.

"The customer can and should therefore lend a hand, try out robots and map their real cases," continues Dold. For this purpose, a complete automation environment is available to interested parties at the new site in Stuttgart-Vaihingen, consisting of the Sysmac automation platform, two robot cells with SCARA and six-axis robots, which are supplied by a mobile robot in order to be able to map intralogistics processes. For electronics production, there is also the option of using Omron's AOI systems at the site.

The Innovation Center will start work in Stuttgart in September together with the ten employees at the site. "With the new Innovation Center, we want to close the gap between theory and practice. The aim is to make the interaction between the various technologies tangible. Thanks to a coordinated overall package of hardware and software, handling and feeding as well as stationary and mobile robotics, significant progress can be made in many areas of factory automation," Dold is convinced.

The company focuses primarily on the automotive and electronics manufacturing sectors, but also on the pharmaceutical, food and consumer goods industries. The new Innovation Center in Stuttgart-Vaihingen is part of a Europe-wide, customer-oriented automation landscape comprising eight locations to date and complements the existing German facilities in Langenfeld and Dortmund. A total of more than six million euros has already been invested in automation centers.