Automated trucks

At LogiMAT 2024 in Stuttgart, Linde Material Handling focussed on the topic of automation. Other topics included energy, safety and warehouse intelligence.

With the Robotics4Retail survey, the EHI Retail Institute is investigating how robotics and automation are revolutionizing intralogistics. Who are the drivers of automation and what comprehensive solutions and industrial trucks does Linde offer?

Automation made easy: This was the challenge facing TST GmbH in Düsseldorf (Germany). Armed with the expertise and technology from Linde, it was possible to overcome this challenge in a short space of time.

Our dispatch logistics are good, but how can we make them even better? This was the challenge facing ebm-papst, a leading producer of fan and motor products, at its site in Mulfingen, Germany. The answer: Fully automate one of its material flow processes using trusted expertise from Linde. The project has proven a huge success, so much so that transport volumes have exceeded expectations and further automation projects are being planned for the future.

The most fascinating equations are known to be the ones with multiple unknown variables. One such variable was to be found in the “Automation” chapter of the Requirements Specification from paper specialists Franz Veit. How can the transportation tasks be reliably handled in a production and warehousing environment whose face is constantly changing?

Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are becoming increasingly important in modern intralogistics. The driverless platform trucks are used for automated or partially automated goods transport and thereby noticeably increase efficiency in warehouses and logistics hotspots.

Every year, the Marketing Department and Management Board of Wolf GmbH, a systems supplier for heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and solar technology based in Mainburg, Lower Bavaria, develop a motto that aims to give employees orientation and motivation. “Courage to embrace change”, the message for 2016, could not be more appropriate with regard to the purchase of the company’s first robot industrial truck.

If demand, and therefore the production volume, increases, this is actually a cause for celebration. But how can you manage the increased flow of goods without burdening employees with more and more repetitive transport assignments? At the plastics processor Poloplast, the answer is automation, made by Linde.

The Opel plant in Aspern, Austria, is the first Opel location to commission fully automatic vehicles for longer distances. In doing so, the carmaker relies entirely on Linde's expertise. The challenge was to integrate autonomous driving into the existing systems.

Simple does not always mean trivial: proof of this is the automation project of Linde Material Handling for BASF Italia. In order to optimize efficiency and safety, a flexible, secure and fast-to-implement solution for Logistics 4.0 was integrated on the basis of an automated guided vehicle (AGV).

Ground handling is a challenge for airport logistics. The demands on industrial trucks and logistics solutions are correspondingly high. Demand is for robust vehicles that enable fast and safe handling and are increasingly focusing on alternative drive systems.

Two Linde L-MATIC pallet stackers make their rounds between the warehouse and dispatch at Austrian sanitary equipment specialist HOLTER. Meanwhile, the human colleagues get to focus entirely on their actual work: value-adding order picking.