FANUC Pertronics doubles production volume

‍

FANUC Pertronics, which stands for Fuji Automatic Numerical Control, has customers worldwide and a footprint that includes the United States, Europe, Africa, and other countries in Asia. It manufactures automation equipment for various industries, such as the machine-tending, electrical, electronic, and food and beverage industries. Choosing to partner with AutoStore for their automated warehouse picking system has benefited them in numerous significant ways.

A strong case for a smarter system

Before the team installed an AutoStore system at the Nagano facility, picking was done manually.

“It was a process of moving carts back and forth in a small warehouse area and half of the time was taken up by walking. This wasn’t a value-adding part of the process,” recalls Michiharu Morimoto, Factory Process Administration and Section Manager at FANUC Pertronics. “The waste of energy and time taken up by this process was one of the decisive factors in opting for the AutoStore system.”

Several options were considered at the time, including the use of an automated crane – a solution that was familiar to the FANUC Pertronics team.

But FANUC Pertronics wanted to improve their warehouse picking rates and had to find a way to ensure multiple workers could pick simultaneously. In the end, the cost of achieving high performance with an automated crane would have been prohibitive.

The AutoStore system, in turn, overcame this issue as it’s housed in a layered grid that takes up relatively little floor space.

Initially, the team was concerned that a small company such as theirs might not be able to implement AutoStore, recalls Jun Shiohara, Representative Director and President of FANUC Pertronics. In addition, the company aimed to avoid full automation, usually opting to create a line where manual work and robots collaborate.

In the end, however, going the AutoStore route made the most sense on all levels.

{{quote}}

Expanding storage capacity at FANUC Pertronics

The AutoStore system was installed in 2019 and was tailor-made for FANUC Pertronics, as the building and installation were designed at the same time.

The grid size at the warehouse was 1,120 square meters (12,055 square feet) at installation but has since been expanded to 1,450 square meters (15,607 square feet).

The team shares a few facts:

• Currently, there are 26,000 Bins in the aluminum grid.
• Another 9,000 Bins will be added in late 2022.
• Over 2,500 of these Bins are used to hold multiple product lines.
• There are eight ConveyorPorts and six CarouselPorts in the automated warehouse picking system.
• Two additional CarouselPorts will be added with the Bin expansion.

The advantages of AutoStore

For FANUC Pertronics, the decision to install this system has had many positive spinoffs, including:

• The ability to guarantee a high picking rate
• A shift of focus to production for the manufacturing sites
• Improved storage efficiency
• Greater flexibility of the layout
• Room for expansion
• Reduced lead time
• Double the production volume
• Highly accurate parts management and traceability
• Significant picking error reduction

“By reducing the lead time, the workspace has been expanded and secured,” adds Shiohara. “More specifically, the total lead time from parts delivery to manufacturing and shipping has been reduced significantly.”

FANUC expected that the doubling of production volume would require them to hire many more people. However, two more employees were enough to cover the increased volume.

In addition, the team designed and implemented functions tailored to each Port in accordance with FANUC Pertronics’ way of doing things. As a result, “we were able to operate the system without any problems,” concludes Nobuyuki Inoue, Sales Manager at Okamura.