Background
ZEEKR is a premium electric automobile brand owned by Geely Automobile Holdings. The ZEEKR 001 is one of the best-selling models with more than 1.57 million customized configurations. How does the ZEEKR factory manage to process such a large scale of SKUs and not make any mistakes? How can the factory achieve an annual production of over 200,000 high-quality vehicles with high labor efficiency?
To cope with the above situations, ZEEKR built its smart factory in 2018. The factory is powered by 5G and IIoT technologies. Together with the mobile robot solutions from Hikrobot and other industrial robots, the factory has built a smart, agile and transparent manufacturing system and intralogistics system.
Solution
Over 300 AMRs are deployed in the assembly, welding and painting workshops to deliver small and large-sized spare parts, improving labor efficiency by at least 20% and energy utilization rate by 15%.
Instead of traditional tow tractors, the welding workshop deployed more than 200 AMRs to implement automated material handling between welding processes, automated delivery of self-made stamp spare parts and point-to-point delivery of outsourced welding spare parts in WIP warehouses, significantly improving workplace safety.
All AMRs are under the same control of the Hikrobot Robot Control System (RCS). The RCS recognizes different sizes of load carriers and dispatches all the AMRs through intelligent and flexible route planning to avoid traffic jams and improve material handling efficiency.
Together with Hikrobot intelligent warehouse management system (iWMS), the RCS seamlessly docks with ZEEKR’s upper-level system, LES, to realize digital management of overall information and improve the accuracy and timeliness of material distribution.
Customer Benefits
1. Fit into 40+ types of load carriers with only two types of AMRs
The load carriers in the welding workshop vary in size, with lengths ranging from 1,000 mm to 4,000 mm. However, Hikrobot latent mobile robot is adaptable to different types of load carriers. Only two types of latent mobile robots fit all these 40+ types of load carriers.
2. Integrated with the PLC system to build the lighthouse factory
Through RCS docking with the PLC system, the AMRs dock with the robot arm stations to achieve precise material feeding even in the dark, greatly reducing energy consumption and making the lighthouse factory a reality.
3. Lower the work strength and optimize working conditions for the staff
So far, Hikrobot has helped Geely Auto, Toyota, FAW-Volkswagen, BMW and other well-known auto brands build smart intralogistics for their smart factories. Currently, Hikrobot has achieved large-scale cluster control of over 900 robots in a single project, creating a new benchmark practice for smart intralogistics in the automotive industry.
