Coventry automotive supplier Brose has invested nearly £2m in new driverless logistics technology.
The company, which provides seats and window regulators to the likes of Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Toyota, was set on optimising its operations for the last two years.
It has invested in Automated Guided Vehicles, which it says will speed up the movement of finished products.
Its Colliery Lane factory has embraced the driverless vehicle technology. Travelling at one metre per second, the AGVs will cover 67,000km per year.
The company said that they are used where high volumes of repetitive material movements are required and where little or no human decision making is needed.
They use laser reflectors for navigation and are programmed by CAD-based software to route available paths.
“The automotive sector is extremely demanding and there is a continuous need to produce parts quicker and react to fluctuating patterns in demand – logistics is crucial to us being able to achieve this,” explains Steve Wilkins, managing director of Brose UK.
“Coventry was chosen as one of the pilot locations due to the compelling business case we put forward for helping us to win future contracts.”
“AGVs have little downtime and operate at a fixed rate so it is easier to plan operational activity. In addition, they are computer controlled, which eliminates human errors in terms of damage to the facility, spillage to inventory and improved safety of pedestrians.”
Brose has been investing in operations over the past few years, investing £10m and creating jobs with the upgrades of its two Coventry factories in 2017.