Automation is key to facilitating reliable and on-time delivery of medical products to hospitals, healthcare facilities, and private service providers, according to TGW Logistics. The company is building a high-performance fulfillment center in Gothenburg, Sweden, for healthcare specialist OneMed.
OneMed is one of Sweden’s leading providers of medical products. In 2023, it generated about 3.7 billion Swedish krona ($389.5 million) in revenue.
As part of the Asker Healthcare Group, OneMed sells an assortment of roughly 30,000 products. This includes anything from special items for laboratories and diagnostics, bandaging material, and surgical clothing.
“We are delighted to be working together with OneMed,” stated Bart Van Eycken, director of sales for the North Europe customer unit at TGW Logistics. “Our companies share a mutual value system and a collaborative partnership approach—providing a strong foundation for us to build on.”
“The healthcare industry has great potential for growth, and we are confident that we will be implementing more projects together with the Asker Group in the future,” he added.
TGW Logistics’ plans for the warehouse
OneMed’s Gothenburg distribution center will include an automated order-fulfillment system for goods-to-person (G2P) picking. TGW Logistics said the system will encompass a 24 m (78.7 ft.) high shuttle warehouse with more than 80,000 storage locations.
It will use a mixture of manual and automated picking at the PickCenter One workstations. The stations enable workers to pick sterile products in a cleanroom, while a RovoFlex Robot picks items autonomously.
With RovoFlex, OneMed can easily switch between manual and automatic picking, said TGW. While picking autonomously, the Marchtrenk, Austria-based company said its system uses machine learning to learn with every gripping operation.
TGW Logistics asserted that intelligent picking processes can minimize the number of required shipping cartons and help to reduce waste sustainably.
The KingDrive conveyor technology will connect individual areas of the installation. OneMed and TGW plan to complete the project by the fall of 2026.
Healthcare is an increasing focus for robotics
Robots are increasingly making their way into the healthcare market, whether it be in logistics, pharmaceuticals, or even moving supplies within hospitals. The global hospital logistics market size could be worth around $18.4 billion by 2033, up from $3.9 billion in 2023, according to Market.US.
The research firm predicted that the market will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.8% during the forecast period. It said key technology developments in artificial intelligence and robot functionality will enable this growth.
In addition, executives from Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR) and ForwardX Robotics recently told Automated Warehouse that healthcare presents a major opportunity for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in the coming years.
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