Continuous Innovation as a Key Success Factor 

As a provider of highly complex agricultural machinery, CLAAS understands the importance of continuous innovation — not only in its products but also in its manufacturing and logistics. To meet the growing demands of the industry, CLAAS constantly explores new ways to enhance efficiency and quality. A core component of its newly implemented supply chain strategy is the automation of intralogistics processes. 

“Innovation has always been a key driver of success at CLAAS. This applies to our products as well as to our logistics processes.” – Bastian Linnenbrink, Senior Vice President Global Supply Chain Management at CLAAS 

Global Focus for Fast Scalability 

As part of this strategy, CLAAS launched its own logistics automation program, led by a globally operating expert team. The goal was to find a solution that could be deployed across various locations and use cases while maintaining scalability. 

At the Harsewinkel site in North Rhine-Westphalia, the focus was on automating material transport from 70 different consumption points to the respective assembly lines. Key priority was to quickly establish a fully operational system, that remains flexible to handle future requirements. This required an automation solution offering maximum efficiency and minimizing downtime. 

CLAAS chose idealworks’ autonomous mobile robot (AMR) iw.hub to as the ideal hardware to master these challenges. The fleet of AMRs is centrally managed by the intelligent automation platform, AnyFleet. In addition to seamlessly integrating with warehouse management systems and peripheral devices, AnyFleet allows for the future integration of both manual forklifts and tugger trains as well as automated vehicles to cover a variety of use cases. CLAAS has taken another step toward sustainable intralogistics automation with the implementation of idealworks’ robotics ecosystem. 

In just six months, the deployment of 30 iw.hubs was completed as part of a three-phase implementation plan. Today, the AMRs have completely taken over the transport missions that were previously handled manually. 

Challenges: Mixed Traffic and a Compact Picking Area 

One of the key challenges during deployment was managing the high-traffic environment, which included forklifts, manual tugger trains, automated guided vehicles (AGV), and pedestrians. Thanks to intelligent route planning and the 3D obstacle-avoidance feature, the iw.hub fleet can navigate this environment reliably, even under heavy traffic situations. 

Another focus during implementation was the picking area, which has very limited space and thus requires high precision. To address this, the new follow-the-line functionality of the iw.hub was utilized. While the AMRs generally operate autonomously, this feature makes use of magnetic strips to ensure the transport routes for goods pickup are followed with maximum accuracy and speed. 

“In the end, two factors were crucial to the rapid success of this project. At CLAAS, all parties worked together seamlessly, and idealworks provided excellent support.” – Torben Süllwald, Global Coordinator of Service Function Material Flow Technologies at CLAAS