IFOY Audit
Finalists undergo the three-stage IFOY Audit as part of the IFOY Audit, which takes place during the TEST CAMP INTRALOGISTICS. This consists of the scientific IFOY Innovation Check, the IFOY Test and the jury test.
WAKU Sense
WAKU Robotics GmbH
WAKU Sense is a real-time analytics dashboard that allows management as well as the operations team to benchmark the different robot types in performance, the capacity of utilisation, and reliability across sites. Functions like incident management, alerting and different service tools allow the operations team to observe the result of robot operations in order to maximizse performance day by day.
Product name and company
WAKU Sense – WAKU Robotics GmbH
Description
WAKU Sense is an interactive dashboard that can interact with every mobile robot, independent of the manufacturer. It includes important functions like real-time monitoring, alerting, incident management and a service logbook. In the first step, it is thus possible to monitor and compare the reliability, workload and performance of the robots in real-time. Furthermore, it allows the operations team to identify problems immediately, to log incidents digital, and track the progress of solutions via chat and status changes. The alerting system sends error messages and incidents to the relevant key users via the common chat channels used in the company.
By using the latest cloud technology and various security mechanisms, data can be transmitted quickly, safe, and reliable. The cloud solution also provides fast and easy access for all employees via a web tool or smartphone app. WAKU Sense has been developed especially for suppliers of intralogistics. The real-time monitoring key figures provide a direct overview and instructions that are needed to improve the operation of the robot fleet. WAKU Sense not only makes problems visible but also provides recommendations to solve those problems.
By integrating WAKU Sense into the WAKU marketplace, customers not only get real-time monitoring but also the possibility to adapt their robot fleet for current and future conditions.WAKU Sense is an interactive dashboard that can interact with every mobile robot, independent of the manufacturer. It includes important functions like real-time monitoring, alerting, incident management and a service logbook. In the first step, it is thus possible to monitor and compare the reliability, workload and performance of the robots in real-time. Furthermore, it allows the operations team to identify problems immediately, to log incidents digital, and track the progress of solutions via chat and status changes. The alerting system sends error messages and incidents to the relevant key users via the common chat channels used in the company.
By using the latest cloud technology and various security mechanisms, data can be transmitted quickly, safe, and reliable. The cloud solution also provides fast and easy access for all employees via a web tool or smartphone app. WAKU Sense has been developed especially for suppliers of intralogistics. The real-time monitoring key figures provide a direct overview and instructions that are needed to improve the operation of the robot fleet. WAKU Sense not only makes problems visible but also provides recommendations to solve those problems.
By integrating WAKU Sense into the WAKU marketplace, customers not only get real-time monitoring but also the possibility to adapt their robot fleet for current and future conditions.
Innovations
The most important innovation is the development of a manufacturer-independent and cross-manufacturer dashboard, which allows the operations team on-site to record the relevant key figures of all robots in use and to be able to react quickly to problems from any point in the company. Although some robot manufacturers usually supply their own dashboards, those are only designed for technical system data and differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. Furthermore, these are usually passive and display data only retrospectively, whereas WAKU Sense displays real-time data with active recommendations for action.
WAKU Sense is easy to integrate as interfaces to some robot manufacturers already exist or can be added with minimal effort. A complex integration into warehouse management systems can thus be avoided.
Through WAKU’s unique business model, which combines a curated marketplace for mobile robots and consulting in intralogistics, WAKU has the unique advantage of interacting with both robot manufacturers and robot users. WAKU knows the problems of customers and robot suppliers and has used this knowledge to design WAKU Sense, which is specifically designed to solve problems in the operation of mobile robots.
Market relevance
Through the revolution in automation and robotics, logistics companies are currently facing rapid changes, high customer demands and more efficient competitors. The total market volume of logistics companies in Europe amounts to 278 billion Euro and is expected to grow by about 20 percent annually until 2024. The logistics sector is facing increasingly fast delivery cycles and other challenges, such as omni-channel distribution and same-day delivery requirements. Against this background, there is a need to automate warehouses with the latest technology. For Europe, the number of warehouses is about 10,000. Not only large companies but also small and medium-sized enterprises are striving for efficiency and automation. For WAKU Sense both, robot manufacturers and logistics companies, are potential customers. Every mobile robot can be analysed and optimized with WAKU Sense. It is expected that the number of robots in the industry will grow to more than one million by 2022; and the trend is rising. There is the option to operate each of these mobile robots with WAKU Sense.
Customer benefits
There are already more than 1,000 different mobile robot models that can be used in the logistics industry. Each mobile robot manufacturer has its own interface, which displays different key figures. Efficient comparison of the different robot models, use cases, or locations is not possible. Through real-time monitoring and the corresponding alerting, malfunctions within the company can be recognised and reported immediately to find a solution together with the service partner and manufacturer.
WAKU Sense offers an uniform interface and gives the customer the possibility to monitor all important operational key figures of his own robot fleet, to compare and optimise the performance of the robots among each other. The interface is continuously developed with customers and suppliers and uses well-known UX patterns to give the user a familiar feeling when operating the system. The dashboard is available in the browser as well as on mobile devices.
The digital documentation records repairs, performance, and conditions during the complete lifecycle of each robot and ensure efficient asset management for the customer.
Test report
WAKU Sense is a real-time analytics dashboard that allows both management and operations teams to benchmark different types of robots. The interactive dashboard can communicate with any mobile robot, regardless of the brand.
With the platform, WAKU Robotics is not targeting production logistics so much as logistics service providers. A market segment in which large numbers of AGVs and AMRs are rarely used, but in which the topic of automation is very much on the agenda. The dashboard enables real-time interaction between robots and employees; at all levels of the company. Users receive the relevant information via push messages. This can be done via SMS or email, for example, but other common communication methods are also possible.
What is interesting for whom depends on the account setting. A manager, for example, is more interested in optimisation potentials, while an employee on the working level is more likely to receive a message if an object blocks the route of an AGV.
Robot reliability, utilisation and performance are monitored and compared in real time by WAKU Sense. Functions such as fault management, alerting and various service tools enable the operations team to monitor the outcome of robot operations.
In addition, WAKU Sense enables the operations team to identify problems immediately, log incidents digitally and track the progress of solutions via chat and status changes. The alert system sends error messages and incidents to the appropriate key users via the chat channels commonly used in the company. This ensures high availability and enables continuous performance improvement.
Through the use of state-of-the-art cloud technology and various security mechanisms, the data is transferred quickly, securely and reliably. The cloud solution also offers quick and easy access for all employees via a web tool or smartphone app. Unlike other IFOY nominees, WAKU Sense deliberately does not use the VDA 5050 interface, but obtains the information directly from the robots and from its own fleet management.
The real-time key figures immediately provide insight, overview and advice necessary for optimal use of the robot fleet. The most important information is at the top. The further you scroll down, the deeper you go into detail. In the future, machine learning techniques will be used to adapt the system so that it knows itself what is interesting for a particular account. This information will then automatically be displayed higher up. WAKU Sense also gives recommendations on how to solve identified problems. The system is currently available in German and English. WAKU Robotics offers other languages on request.
IFOY Test Verdict
WAKU Sense is a real-time analytics dashboard that allows both management and operations teams to benchmark different types of robots. The key innovation is the development of a brand-independent and multi-vendor dashboard that allows relevant data to be seen at a glance, anywhere, anytime and in real time. This brings further optimisation of the logistics process one step closer.
IFOY Innovation Check
Market relevance
WAKU Sense is a solution for integrating the data of various industrial trucks from different manufacturers in a cloud-based platform. The need for transparency among users is increasing with the growth of large vehicle fleets in industry and logistics. The punctual provision of services and the efficiency of transport processes depend on having as many industrial trucks as possible available and being able to identify breakdowns and problems in good time.
Customer benefit
The user of WAKU Sense receives all available information directly from the vehicles without access from the respective control system. This gives the user an uninfluenced overview of the status and data of the various vehicles at the working level. Together with the features of the cloud-based platform, which enables secure but geographically and temporally unrestricted joint access by the various user groups, especially users on site, maintenance and management, this results in good customer benefits for the user.
Novelty
Access to a control system via a cloud-based platform is not fundamentally new. However, the cross-system, independent and uninfluenced aggregation of condition and usage data is new and is geared towards the important application area of the use of mixed industrial truck fleets. WAKU Sense can therefore be rated as innovative.
Functionality / type of implementation
The functionality of the dashboard is well implemented. The customisation options are good and allow users to adjust their focus on processes, metrics and condition displays in their dashboard.
| Functionality / type of implementation | + |
| Novelty / Innovation | + |
| Customer benefits | + |
| Market relevance | + |
| ++ very good / + good / Ø balanced / – less / — not available | |
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Image/video credits: WAKU Robotics GmbH
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Statutes
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Committees
The International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year has three bodies: Jury, sponsors, and advisory board.