Together with Mercedes-Benz, SAFELOG has won the prestigious IFOY Award 2024 in the “Integrated Customer Solution” category. This award recognizes the outstanding innovative strength and efficiency of the software-based AGV fleets at Mercedes-Benz in Sindelfingen through excellent cooperation between Mercedes-Benz and SAFELOG.
Efficient belt supply and significantly reduced belt downtimes thanks to outstanding availability – impressive results. The IFOY jury is unanimous in its verdict: the use of mobile AGVs from SAFELOG at Mercedes-Benz offers considerable customer benefits in a highly complex environment. The award-winning project focuses on automated assembly line delivery for final assembly at Mercedes-Benz and comprehensive data collection and analysis. Mobile robots and various load carriers that can be driven under as well as linked and monitored pick-by-light racks from SAFELOG are used. The picked shopping baskets are delivered to the conveyor belt by the robots from a picking area in the fleet network with dynamic advance monitoring.
The close cooperation between the project partners resulted in an innovative and automotive-grade concept based on robust hardware and powerful software components. Particularly noteworthy is the integration of the AI-based control system developed in-house at Mercedes, which performs fleet management and analysis tasks.
The successful overall concept starts with the flexibility of the mobile robots and the simple and robust implementation, and extends to the software ecosystem developed together with Mercedes-Benz and a very high overall system availability.
The fact that Mercedes-Benz develops and maintains the software and the master control system itself enables the Group to operate independently of licenses and to be as flexible as possible in the event of errors, desired changes and adjustments.
“This win is a great accolade,” says Mathias Behounek, Managing Director of SAFELOG. “The IFOY Award confirms our innovative strength and our ability to implement highly complex projects efficiently. The fact that we were able to prevail in such a highly competitive category shows the exceptional quality and considerable customer benefit of our solution. This success would not have been possible without the excellent cooperation with Mercedes-Benz.”
“This victory confirms our assessment that our exceptional collaboration has resulted in an outstanding software environment that demonstrates very convincing automotive-grade performance on a daily basis,” explains Klaus Bücheler, Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Supply-Chain Planning.
The IFOY Award (International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year) is considered one of the most important awards in the intralogistics industry and recognizes outstanding technical innovations and solutions.
Photo:
Klaus Bücheler (left), Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Supply-Chain Planning, and Mathias Behounek (center), Managing Director of SAFELOG, together with laudator Prof. Dr.-Ing Alice Kirchheim (right) from Fraunhofer IML, are delighted to receive the most important award in logistics.
The production lines in Hall 46 are supplied with material by mobile robots from SAFELOG GmbH. (Image: © Mercedes-Benz)
More than 340 SAFELOG M4 tow mobile robots are in use in Hall 46. (Image: © SAFELOG GmbH)
