The German textile company Bierbaum, headquartered in Borken, employs 750 people and generated an annual turnover of 112.5 million euros in 2016. Bierbaum's two main areas of production are technical nonwovens and, above all, bed linen. The latter is sold under brands such as Bierbaum Wohnen, Irisette, Strenesse and numerous private labels.

In order to make production more efficient and relieve its own employees of non-value-adding activities, Bierbaum has been using four autonomously navigating transport robots for a year now to transport open paint drums, which were previously moved by many employees using a hand truck. The company has now purchased another transport robot from the Proant 490 platform from Insystem Automation. The transport robot can be easily integrated into the existing fleet. The new vehicle is registered with the fleet manager and immediately taken into account in order management. This technology also allows the fleet to be scaled as required at a later date.

Flexible integration into process automation
Jan-Frederic Bierbaum, Managing Director of the group of companies: "Due to the growing demand for our products, our internal transport orders have also increased. By expanding the transport robot fleet, we can respond to this development in a sensible way and also create a backup solution should one of the vehicles need maintenance or repairs." He adds: "New automation technologies and a seamless wireless communication infrastructure can make a decisive contribution to producing where the demand is in future."

At Bierbaum, the transport robots move independently between the ink kitchen and the four printing presses at an average speed of one meter per second through the hall and search for the optimal route to their destination. Open plastic buckets with different dimensions and weights of up to kilograms are transported.

The vehicles are designed to be safe for people thanks to a built-in Sick safety laser scanner, which constantly scans its surroundings in the direction of travel and uses speed-dependent warning and protective fields to slow down or swerve the vehicle when obstacles are encountered. The vehicles communicate with each other and with the fleet management and order management system via a protected WLAN network. Thanks to modern, high-current, cycle-resistant battery technology (LiFeYPO4 cells), the transport robots can also be charged quickly. as