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Indiana Furniture, headquartered for over a century in Jasper, IN, is committed to providing their customers with office furnishings of the highest standards in quality and craftsmanship. Through advanced information systems and state-of-the-art technology, they design and engineer office furniture casegoods, conference tables, and seating. Indiana Furniture delivers a wide range of environmentally conscious products, styles, and sizes at competitive prices while continually introducing new product lines of office and commercial furniture.      

Situation:

Indiana Furniture was in the process of investigating the potential implementation of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) for their facilities when they saw a posting for the automation webinar series – Introduction to Autonomous Robots, hosted by Purdue MEP. They found the webinar very informative and took advantage of the offer for an application assessment at their site.

Solution:  

The Purdue MEP team conducted an onsite visit to their plywood facility for the AMR Application Assessment. Through the assessment and additional consultation, the team discussed considerations for the implementation of different AMRs and potential applications. As part of the assessment deliverables, Purdue MEP provided a detailed report with financial projections, efficiency projections, as well as facility adjustments that would need to be made when it came to details like the robot top module type, height, and navigation area that would be required.

Results:

The information from the webinar and on-site consultation helped validate Indiana Furniture’s initial AMR selection.  The detailed report provided by Purdue MEP was utilized in the justification process and provided confirmation that they were on the right track.  Indiana Furniture purchased its initial AMR and performed the integration in-house. The AMR has saved over 186 miles of forklift traffic in the first 11 months of operation alone.  Additional development has been done and they have placed an order for two additional AMRs totaling an investment of over $250,000 in mobile robotic equipment alone. Indiana Furniture is wrapping up a facility expansion of 165,000 sq ft. and the two new, larger mobile robots will be playing an integral role in material handling activity between the old plant and the new expansion.

Results metrics:

• Saved over 186 miles of forklift traffic in the first 11 months of operation
• Invested $250,000 in mobile robotic equipment
• 165,000 SF facility expansion investment

“The knowledge and expertise of the Purdue MEP team provided solid confirmation that we were heading in the right direction on our AMR pursuit.  Any manufacturer considering adapting new technologies should consider utilizing the MEP on-site Automation Application Assessment.” 

- Greg Dellinger, Process Engineer, Indiana Furniture