Rockwell Automates Material Flow at Twinsburg Plant
AMRs and FactoryTalk Orchestration reduce WIP staging space by 50 percent and production downtime by 20 percent.
www.rockwellautomation.com
Rockwell Automation’s manufacturing facility in Twinsburg, Ohio, previously relied heavily on manual cart-based material transport. With operators walking more than eight hours a day to complete 52 percent of the facility's daily material movement, the plant faced high labor dependence and significant non-value-added activity. Furthermore, a lack of synchronization between IT, OT, and automation systems led to delayed material deliveries, excess work-in-process (WIP) inventory, and frequent production downtime.
To eliminate these bottlenecks, the facility launched a multi-phase transformation. In the first phase, Rockwell deployed three OTTO® 100 Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) equipped with 40 red staging carts. These robots automated the movement of raw materials from the kitting area to four assembly lines, relieving operators of repetitive transport duties and generating $162,000 in annual labor savings.
However, material requests were still manually triggered. To achieve true autonomous production logistics, the facility implemented FactoryTalk® Orchestration™ software in Phase 2. This solution seamlessly connected the plant’s FactoryTalk® ProductionCentre® Manufacturing Execution System (MES) directly with the OTTO Fleet Manager. Utilizing configurable, no-code workflows, the system automatically dispatches AMR missions based on real-time production demand as orders progress through manufacturing. As a result, the Twinsburg facility reduced WIP staging space by 50 percent, increased drop-off zone space utilization by 70 percent, and cut production line downtime by 20 percent. Achieving a return on investment within 1.5 years, the Twinsburg site now serves as a production logistics showcase, and the template is being expanded to three additional Rockwell facilities.
Additional Context
This section provides technological and market background not explicitly detailed in the original release.
Integrating AMRs into an existing brownfield manufacturing environment often exposes a significant software integration gap. While AMRs can navigate autonomously, they historically required extensive custom middleware to communicate with a plant's ERP or MES platforms. FactoryTalk Orchestration bridges this IT/OT gap by serving as a central, event-driven integration layer built on the FactoryTalk Optix platform. Instead of relying on manual operator inputs or rigid, hard-coded scripts, the software utilizes a visual drag-and-drop flow builder to translate real-time manufacturing events (such as a completed assembly step in the MES) into direct API calls that trigger the OTTO Fleet Manager. This shift from automated movement to orchestrated logistics fundamentally reduces the physical footprint required for buffer inventory and ensures materials arrive exactly when the assembly cell is ready.
Edited by an industrial journalist, Lekshman Ramdas, with AI assistance.
www.rockwellautomation.com
