Gausium Scrubber 75 Delivering Eco-friendly Store Shine at Prisma Hypermarkets

CHALLENGE

Large Sites

L&T (Lassila & Tikanoja) is a leading facilities service company in Finland that has been taking care of the facility cleaning of Prisma, a Finnish chain of hypermarkets subsidiary to the S Group. The Prisma hypermarkets have an average area of 10,000 square meters, which makes quite a challenge for cleaners to keep the large sites hygiene and tidy, especially when there’re large crowds.

Higher Hygiene Standards

The management of the Prisma hypermarkets puts cleaning quality on top priority, as the visible cleanliness of stores is vital for creating good shopper experience. Especially during the global health crisis of the past few years, cleaning has never been more important and valued. Frequent sanitization of high-touch-surfaces is required to safeguard the visitors’ and employees’ health in retail environments.

Sustainability Criteria

With a mission to make the circular economy a reality, L&T pursues sustainable growth and aims for continuous improvement of energy efficiency in its services. The company also strives to bring forward innovative solutions for positive climate impact as well as providing employees with meaningful work for personal growth.

SOLUTION

In 2019, L&T purchased a number of autonomous floor cleaning robots from CleanBots —Gausium’s partner in Finland. Considering the large size of the stores, Scrubber 75 was the model chosen to serve the facility cleaning at Prisma.

Scrubber 75 is a heavy-duty robotic floor scrubber with an advanced sensor system. It is equipped with 20+ sensors all around the machine body that guarantees superb environmental perception and smart obstacle avoidance. With a 750mm scrubbing width and a 75L clean water tank, the robot is engineered for large-area cleaning missions. Agility is not compromised by its size — Scrubber 75 features superior maneuverability with an innovative front-mounted brush head, an ergonomic steering wheel and stand-on pedal.

Flexible Path Planning and Task Combination

Scrubber 75 offers different path planning options for users to customize their floor cleaning plan. For sites as large as a Prisma hypermarket, the floor spaces could be segmented into several regions, each using a path planning mode that best fits its characteristics. For instance, Real-time Auto Cover mode works best for places that change frequently, such as the areas for temporary displays. In this mode, the robot will return to the previously occupied place to perform cleaning when it detects that the obstacle is removed. For areas that are free from dynamic interferences, Teach & Follow is an efficient mode, in which the robot drives following a route that the operator “teaches”.

Water-saving Filtration System

The robot is equipped with a built-in filtration system that recycles water from the ground, so that the same amount of water could be used over and over again. This spares the needs to refill the machine from time to time, and reduces water consumption by up to 80%.

270-degree Rotational Brush Head

Scrubber 75 is designed with a front-mounted brush head that could rotate 270 degree. This allows it to clean corners and other areas where a normal machine cannot reach.

Cloud-based Monitoring App

Operators can control the floor cleaning through the Gausium mobile app that is supported by the Gausium Cloud Platform. The app is intuitive and offers an array of functionalities, such as task scheduling, remote control, health alarm and data reporting. It keeps the operators informed of the cleaning progress and machine status even when they are away from the site.

RESULTS

Both the cleaning team of L&T and the management of Prisma are pleased with the smart and high-quality clean provided by Scrubber 75. Environmental friendliness and energy efficiency are also among the key benefits of the robot, which accommodates the values of both parties.

The robot is well-received by the L&T cleaning staff at Prisma. Having Scrubber 75 as a crew member alleviates the floor cleaning burdens of the team. Every day, the robot takes about 5 hours to complete the floor cleaning of a hypermarket. It frees up valuable time for the cleaning staff to focus on high-touch surfaces.

The cleaning operators speak highly of the robot’s user-friendliness and versatility in operation. The powerful mobile App renders much more flexibility in terms of arranging cleaning schedules. The robot can be scheduled to take care of the floors at the least disturbing time, such as at night, when the store is closed.

“You rarely see completely new innovations in the cleaning sector, which is why it’s interesting to see a robot in a shop environment. Automation is coming fast to many places and it’s nice to see it being developed here as well.” said Katja Savilakso, Group Manager of Arina, a co-operative society under S Group.

Since the first deployment in November 2019, eight Prisma stores have adopted a unit of Scrubber 75 onsite, embracing the high-tech and eco-friendly retail shine delivered by Gausium’s smart autonomous cleaning solutions.