After a two-year break due to the pandemic, one of Europe’s biggest logistics trade fairs, LogiMAT, finally happened again in the first week of June. As the largest of 1,500 exhibitors, Jungheinrich presented everything the warehouse of the future needs on its stand, including our arculee. And for those who couldn’t attend, the yellow giant also held an exclusive virtual event. Here are some of our highlights from the digital LogiMAT experience:
Stepping into a new universe
Jungheinrich’s main goal during the virtual LogiMAT experience was to offer a look at what the warehouse of the future can look like, featuring four new dimensions of innovation: e-mobility, efficiency, automation, and digitalisation. Once online, the experience website welcomed customers into a virtual stand, where they could explore the history of Jungheinrich, the sustainability efforts, and of course, take a closer look at the product portfolio.
Why arculus?
While the virtual space offered numerous opportunities to learn more about Jungheinrich’s innovative efforts, the true highlight of the event was the online sessions. That’s where arculus, and, of course, especially the arculee, were presented as the stars of the new dimension in automation.
For that, participants were first introduced to some of the reasons behind the two companies’ merger, beginning with AGV Strategy Director, Magdalena Finsterhölzl. According to her, “the agreement with arculus is an important milestone in the implementation of our strategy AGV 2025+”. Richard Brandstetter, Managing Director for Automated Systems, proceeded “we have defined AGVs and AMRs as one of the absolute core topics. And with the arculus acquisition, we are heading forward by years in our development in this important segment.”
Sabine Neuss, Board Member for Technics, dove deeper into the use cases: “We (Jungheinrich) can already cover wide aisle and high applications, arculus is focusing on low applications. That is exactly what we can add to each other”. Max Stähr, the arculus CTO for Robotics complemented – “arculus can provide a good robotics technology stack to enable Jungheinrich a fast growth in the AMR market”.
The cooperation between startup and corporate was also in focus, with Jungheinrich’s Board Member for Sales asking: “what could be better than the great combination of the forces and the strength of Jungheinrich and this creative start-up?”. As for arculus CTO for Software, Frank Hempel, “we (both companies) have a very different history. But that is a chance to put all the good things from both worlds into one and just go for a very shiny future.”
A new dimension in automation
Kind messages aside, a deep dive into the arculee’s features and functions was also a part of the program. For that, product managers and experts Manuela Schmidbauer and Lukas Wohlschläger brought some insights directly from Jungheinrich’s LogiMAT booth in Stuttgart.
Lukas started by presenting the arculee as the latest addition to Jungheinrich’s Mobile Robots portfolio. “The arculee s is the perfect fitting for use cases wherever you find underload or floor-to-floor transports in your warehouse or production area”. He also introduced some of the arculee’s main features, such as the 1000kg payload, the 360 degrees safety system, the lithium-ion technology, and the standardized VDA5050 interface.
The cooperation between the arculee and other Jungheinrich AGVs was also in focus: “Here in our showcase, the EKS 215a is picking up load units from a rack and bringing them to a handover station. Then the arculee takes over from the end of a station or takes the pallet, or the transport table, and brings it, for example, to a production environment. So, in a nutshell, with our whole portfolio of mobile vehicles and robots, we are able to fulfil all the requirements of the customers”, explains Wohlschläger.
Manuela, in turn, talked about Jungheinrich’s customer support when it comes to finding the right automated solution. As she explains, “it’s very important for us is really to be able to cooperate with our consumers in order to find the right solution for their requirements, since we offer different solutions for different environments.”