What were the challenges to be solved and what specific benefits were achieved?

Robert Bosch GmbH is planning to increase productivity with the assistance of Industrie 4.0 solutions. The objective is to ensure lasting, long-term competitiveness. For this purpose the BOSCH Group developed economically priced transportation robots with a high level of autonomy, using products made by the BOSCH Group. These robots are interlinked with each other and because of their data cloud connection they are able to communicate with manufacturing facilities as well as the ERP system. Beyond that, they are able to interact with employees.

Benefits: manual transport expenses, area for staging, as well as available stock, are being reduced because of autonomous transport systems.

“Autonomous transport systems are a precursor to autonomous vehicles on our streets. Starting today we want to use these efficient, swarm-intelligent production providers for our own benefit”, says Andreas Hampe, Technical Plant Manager of the BOSCH Group facility Nuremberg.

How can the Industrie 4.0 approach be described?

The autonomous transport vehicles consist of standard components such as sensors, electric drives and inductive charging batteries. All of the listed pieces are part of the BOSCH Group’s product portfolio. New technologies like 3D – printing of plastic components were used for the development and manufacturing process. Close cooperation with universities was established to achieve quick results in the stage of concept development.

What could be achieved?

In 2014 the concept has been developed and confirmed in an innovation project resulting the first prototypes. During the “Green Factory Bavaria” event in October 2014 the Industrie 4.0 solution won the Green Factory Award.

What measures have been taken to achieve the solution?

In order to ensure a vast development the Bosch Group counted on a broad alliance: Within the stage of concept development, the company cooperated with the department of Electrical Engineering, Precision Engineering and Information Technology at the Technical University Nuremberg Georg Simon Ohm and the Nuremberg Campus of Technology. Furthermore the company joined forces with the Institute for Factory Automation and Production Systems and the Institute of Resource and Energy Efficient Production Machines at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Using the St. Gallen Business Model, a new business model was developed in association with IoT Lab @ Bosch in St. Gallen. To ensure further development that will result in an industrial application a cooperation with Bosch Engineering GmbH is currently been executed.