How can productivity gains be realized through high automation? At Omron's new Innovation Center in Stuttgart, customers are invited to try out technologies and work together to implement improvements. A demonstrator with a complete automation environment including mobile intralogistics is available for this purpose.

As part of a clear industry strategy, Omron has built a global network of technology centers that demonstrate the functionality and benefits of highly automated manufacturing, including flexible robotics, to customers and prospects in a practical way. Based on the central Automation Technology Center in Barcelona and the competence centers specifically for robotics integration (eg in Dortmund), customer and industry-specific Innovation Centers have been set up in recent years to provide concrete evidence of feasibility.

Lucian Dold, General Manager of Marketing Product and Solution for EMEA at Omron, comments: "Proximity to the automotive and packaging industries, as well as mechanical and plant engineering in general, is particularly important to us. After all, it's about trying things together in practice, seeing if something can work, and if so, how - in the end, in many cases, a proof of concept will show how progress in production can be tangibly achieved. "

Automate together: Feasibility proof in focus

"The customer can and should lend a hand, try robots and map his real cases," Dold continues. For this purpose, prospective customers at the new location in Stuttgart-Vaihingen have access to a complete automation environment from Omron, consisting of the automation platform Sysmac, two robotic cells with SCARA or six-axis robots, which are supplied by a mobile robot in order to also be able to map intralogistics processes. For electronics manufacturing, it is also possible to use Omron's AOI systems at the site.

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

Omron focuses primarily on the fields of automotive and electronics manufacturing, as well as the pharmaceutical, food and consumer goods industries. The new Innovation Center in Stuttgart-Vaihingen fits into a Europe-wide, customer-oriented automation landscape from eight locations so far and complements the existing German facilities in Langenfeld and Dortmund. In total, more than six million euros have been invested in automation centers.