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Duka is one of the leading shower enclosure manufacturers in Europe. Its motto is to create high-quality bathroom gems in a short amount of time.
Watch a video interview with DUKA’s team
“Visitors are truly impressed by the performance of these AGVs,” says Yuri Scalzo, Process Manager at Duka.
Read the full transcript of the video
“Before the introduction of AGVs in production, our employees walked 20 km a day. We can now save this time because the AGVs provide the components at the workstation.”
Thomas Gruber, IT Manager: “The idea to invest in automation arose with the construction of our new headquarters. Every process at Duka was re-analyzed and re-thought. The goal: to modernize and simplify our intralogistics.
“The biggest reason to invest in automation was to automate non-value-adding activities as much as possible.”
Yuri Scalzo, Process Manager: “Before the introduction of AGVs in our production, our employees walked 20 km a day. For this reason, we decided to introduce AGVs into our production process to make their work more interesting and to add more value.”
Project Details: Duka Shower Enclosures
| Location | Duka, Bressanone, Italy |
|---|---|
| Application | Internal transportation of parts from automated warehouse to pre-assembly and assembly cells |
| AGVs | 11x Esatroll Dukino |
| Software | ANT navigation (vehicles), ANT server (fleet manager, integrated with in-house ERP and WMS) |
“We decided to use a type of slightly smaller robot (Esatroll Dukino) to manage the connection between humans and machines. Thanks to the compact size of our production area and the dimensions of the boxes we used in our automated warehouse, we managed to handle everything perfectly with these (robot) specifications.
”Our 11 AGVs have three main tasks. The first is to transport materials from the central warehouse to the various bays in our component assembly department. Once component assembly in this area is completed, the material is brought back to the central warehouse.
“The second and third tasks occur simultaneously. The material in the buffer - which connects our production’s ground floor with this production floor - and materials from the central warehouse (those previously assembled) are transported by the AGVs to this central area, which is the start of our production line, where our operators will pick the materials for each order.
“Our AGVs operate thanks to an integrated system called ANT navigation and a server-installed system called ANT server, which is capable of managing the entire AGV fleet. Thanks to a laser mounted on the front (of the robots) and fixed points (features) within the production area, the AGVs can move without causing any disturbance and with extreme precision.
“Thanks to this we are very flexible, because we do not have magnetic strips on the floor or similar structures. We can change the direction of an AGV at our discretion, whenever and however we want.
“We decided to undergo advanced training on the ANT software to be more flexible during our working hours and to provide live service, without having to wait and without needing to communicate with suppliers or other external parties. For example, we can change the different paths of the AGVs and make modifications to a pick-up or drop-off point for each individual box, making us independent in all our decisions within the company.
“The software is very easy to use and thanks to constant updates from BlueBotics we can also develop new ideas within the company without needing to interface with other people, other companies, or BlueBotics. ANT server, in our case, is fully integrated into our other production systems. For example, by pressing a button on our ERP, this communicates with our WMS, which communicates with ANT server, and thanks to this system integration it can deliver the right box to the right place at the right time.
“Every year, when we have visitors at the company, they are truly impressed by the performance of these AGVs. They find it hard to understand how everything works so well, especially the precision with which they enter the various bays, given that they have very few centimeters of tolerance.
Thomas Gruber: “Before using the AGVs, every employee had to search for their components themselves and bring them to the workstation by hand. This preparation time was therefore very long. We can now save this time because the AGVs provide the components to the workstation.
“Another advantage of automation was that we had to prepare all the master data and bill of materials perfectly and cleanly. Because without clean data, there is no automation.”
