Initiative to accelerate automation of intra-factory logistics by SMEs

Launched in October 2017, Logistics for Manufacturing SMEs (L4MS) is supported by the European Commission and is led by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, a research and technology company in the Nordic countries. The length of the L4MS acceleration program is 3.5 years, with a budget of 8.8 million EUR (10.5 million USD).

L4MS has the objective to accelerate the automation of intra-factory logistics of SMEs, and will completely digitalize logistics automation in factories. It is claimed this will allow automation suppliers to develop and deploy logistics technology 10 times faster and cheaper than the current price. L4MS also ‘opens the door’ for SMEs to utilize robotics and other advance technologies, such as artificial intelligence and virtualization.

In a typical factory, the transport of parts and components accounts for 25 percent of employees, 55 percent of factory space and 87 percent of production time. While large manufacturers are quickly adopting mobile robots to increase productivity and flexibility on the factory floor, VTT noted that less than two percent of European SMEs use advanced manufacturing technologies. With SMEs representing 98 percent of the manufacturers, European industry is in danger of being left behind.

L4MS is focused on providing inexpensive and flexible logistics automation for SMEs, which requires no infrastructure change, no production downtime and no special expertise. Ali Muhammad, L4MS coordinator at VTT said: ‘The deployment cost and time of mobile robots will reduce by a factor of 10. It will give never before seen flexibility and agility to SMEs for small batch production and will double their productivity.’

L4MS will provide an IoT platform, OPIL (Open Platform for Innovations in Logistics, integrated with a 3D simulator as a cloud service for complete virtualization of factories. OPIL will contain navigation, localization, mapping and traffic management services for rapid and cost-effective deployment of logistics. OPIL will support automation suppliers to develop and display the optimum logistics options to SMEs. Virtual factories will support the decision-making process of manufacturing SMEs in selecting the best option.

L4MS is intended as a one-stop-shop, where European manufacturing SMEs will be able to acquire technical support, business mentoring, training for workers and finance for the modernization of production, as well as OPIL and the 3D simulator. All these services are provided through a network of regional Digital Innovation Hubs connected to the L4MS.

‘This is a unique opportunity for the SMEs to use robotics and enter the world of artificial intelligence as well as to network at the European level,’ commented Kalle Kantola, vice president of research at VTT.