Imagine processing approximately 10 million mobile phones through a reverse logistics operation that intakes, inspects, grades and prepares them for resale on the secondary device market. Now imagine doing that by hand.
For its new Device Care Center in Mount Juliet, Tenn., global device recovery and refurbishment company Assurant couldn’t have imagined it either and recently decided to reinvent its entire automation system with industrial robots and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).
As one of the world’s top mobile and electronic device insurers, Assurant processes more than 160 million pre-owned devices annually. To maximize the latent value of these devices for refurbishment, resale, or recycling, each unit passes through 52 unique processes from receiving to inspection and grading, processing through refurbishment, and shipping.
About five years ago, the company transitioned its processes from human- to automation-driven to address production, training and staffing issues that were exacerbated by the pandemic and hamstringing operations. Early automation iterations with three-axis robots and gantry systems were slow, cumbersome and ponderous to deploy, so Assurant decided an automation evolution was necessary.
Pivotal to that evolution was AMR and industrial robot technology from KUKA that allowed Assurant to gain speed and efficiency via an easy and profitable transition.
A Dock-to-Dock Solution
Assurant involves automation from the very beginning of the recovery process. AMRs transport heavy cases of devices from unloading docks throughout the facility to various processing and workstations. Designed with advanced sensor and battery technology, the AMRs can safely navigate obstacles autonomously and find alternative routes in the case of path obstructions. Lithium-ion batteries and inductive charging modes provide 24/7 operation with 99% availability.
For Assurant’s core recovery tasks, which are inspection and processing, 18 compact, 6-axis robots work in cells where cosmetic condition scanning, data collection and resets are performed. Driven by compact, space-saving robot controllers, the robots plug mobile phones into Assurant’s equipment that collects device and operating data and then wipes them clean.
For its linking and inspecting stations, Assurant selected extremely fast 6-axis robots that offer dexterity and precision within confined spaces. Equipped with adaptive software, the robots adjust to force and torque encountered in the connecting process, ensuring consistency and reliability regardless of phone design or brand. This eliminates the risk of damage to phone ports or other equipment.
To inspect and grade a phone’s cosmetic quality, a robot orients and manipulates the device at a constant distance past scanning cameras that use artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms for quality assignments. In total, the linking and scanning process involves 27 station points the robot must engage, which directly figured into Assurant’s requirements.
“We were looking at linear speed, workspace and reach as our primary criteria,” says Nathaniel Payne, Assurant’s senior automation engineer. “We needed the biggest robot we could fit in a tiny cell that could reach all the positions, and the selected model was tremendously effective with the perfect fit and exact amount of payload capacity we wanted from a robot.”
When inspection, processing and sorting are completed, AMRs return the devices to the docks for shipment.
An Automated Future
Improvements in efficiency and throughput were obvious for Assurant after integrating a full system of AMRs and fixed robotics into a previously human-centric, manually driven system.
“Previously, our rates were incredibly slow, and our results were incredibly inconsistent,” says Pete Bremer, Assurant’s vice president of global automation engineering. “The addition of robotics has allowed us to increase velocity with a high degree of accuracy while maintaining our labor costs.”
Recovering the time lost to manual processes has provided significant cumulative gains over time, as well. A recent production snapshot showed the company was operating two months ahead of schedule while processing devices through its peak period over every other year.
When Assurant started its investigation into making the move to automation, it evaluated suppliers on multiple criteria, including range and diversity of products and the ability to integrate AMRs with fixed robotics. These factors drove the company’s decision to move forward.
Commissioning the various cells and systems was also critical to success. Engineers used an engineering software suite to program and configure the automated processing systems.
Having the supplier provide optimized software was helpful for replicating and rolling out new systems, Payne explains. “We could configure and replicate the logic off-line so new cells would function the same way. It was great for mass deployment.”
In addition to 24/7 customer support with 24-hour turnaround, Assurant leaned on its automation supplier to help dispel common misunderstandings and clarify the roles of robotics and automation with the company’s partners.
“It took a collaborative approach to help our team understand that robots are not coming for their jobs. Instead, the automation works as a trusted partner, not a replacement,” Bremer says.
The partnership is also for the long term and on a global scale, Assurant said. Advanced systems for material handling, bin picking and AMR migration are already being designed for the company’s other facilities.
“The future of Assurant is committed to automation,” Bremer says. “Recent events have let us know that an automated future is our only future, and that’s the direction we continue to head.”
