Japanese Factory Introduces Scrubber 50 Pro to Accelerate Automation Efforts

The Challenge

Shimada Industrial Co., Ltd. is a Japanese manufacturing company that specializes in assembling air conditioning equipment and precision sheet-metal processing.

The factory faced challenges in keeping the environment clean due to the movement of people and forklifts —dust and dirt were constantly being brought in from outside. The employees had to spend a considerable amount of their time outside of their working hours cleaning the floors to ensure a clean workplace. With a total floor space of 13,223 square meters, the cleaning process was a daunting task.

Mr. Wataru Shimada, CEO of Shimada Industrial Co., Ltd., believed that automation was the way forward. He recognized that automation would be essential for factory management in the near future and would like to start the automation process in areas familiar to the employees, such as cleaning.

The Solution

Figure 1: Scrubber 50 Pro at the Shimada factory (cr: SoftBank Robotics)

Shimada Industrial Co., Ltd. introduced one unit of Scrubber 50 Pro from Softbank Robotics, an award-winning robot floor cleaner developed by Gausium.

User-friendliness

Scrubber 50 Pro has a touchscreen with intuitive interfaces that allow users to easily navigate and program the robots. Staff do not need to have any special technical skills to operate the robot floor cleaner, which helps to make the transition to autonomous cleaning a smooth one.

Advanced sensing & perception

Scrubber 50 Pro is equipped with a state-of-the-art sensing system that enables it to detect people and obstacles and make smart avoidance at once. Automated floor cleaning machine stops in front of automatic doors when they are closed and starts moving when they are opened.

Eco-friendliness

Additionally, Scrubber 50 Pro is an eco-friendly cleaning solution that comes with a 5-stage water filtration system. The robot floor cleaner recycles and reuses the water from the ground, saving up to 80% freshwater consumption.

Benefits

The introduction of Scrubber 50 Pro has brought significant benefits to the cleaning process at Shimada Industrial Co., Ltd.

The robot cleans the dirt and dust brought in from outside immediately, which makes the factory employees and visitors feel good. The robot’s sensors perform very well, allowing it to navigate through the factory floor and avoid obstacles and people in real-time by seamlessly stopping and starting its movements.

Ms. Momoka Hirama, Marketing and Sales Representative of the company, said that they were a little worried about introducing a cleaning robot. However, they soon understood that it was very helpful in making their cleaning process easier and reducing the cleaning hours.

Mr. Wataru Shimada stated that one of the main benefits of the robot floor cleaner was that it reduced the time for cleaning the employees had to do outside their working hours. He also believed that Scrubber 50 Pro would enhance the image of the manufacturing industry and improve the overall perception of the company.

“I expect that Scrubber 50 Pro will be something that can enhance the image of the manufacturing industry. In that sense, I would like  many people to come and see the Scrubber 50 Pro, and learn what it is and what  it brings to our factory.”

— Wataru Shimada, CEO of Shimada Industrial Co., Ltd.