RAGHAV in Small Industries

If you have read our previous articles in the tech blog series, you must know RAGHAV very well by now. For those who haven’t, RAGHAV is our first ever adaptable AGV for material movement. Till now we have seen how various manufacturing industries like Automobile, Pharmaceuticals and Food processing can benefit with RAGHAV. We agree that these are comparatively bigger industries, meaning that the production volumes and capital they can invest, both are higher and hence they prefer to use modern machinery and equipment like AGVs to transport load.

What about the small-scale industries? We all know that India being a developing country, majority of our industries are smaller in nature. In fact, these small-scale industries contribute to around 40% of the gross industrial value of our economic growth. To give a few examples, cosmetics, fertilizers, toys, stationary, clothing, printing are all smaller in nature. Can these industries also benefit with RAGHAV? The answer is a big YES. Let us see how in our today’s topic RAGHAV in Small Industries.

• Small industries are usually not exposed to latest technology. They lack the requisite knowledge to modernize their plants and therefore continue to work with obsolete technics where all the processes including manufacturing, packaging, handling of raw materials to finished products are done manually. Such companies do not even think of employing an AGV like RAGHAV for material handling because of two major reasons that is COST and SPACE CRUNCH. But like we said in our last article “Robotics: Make In India”, this was the precise motivation behind the birth of RAGHAV and our series of AGVs – making newer technologies available to all types of industries in India.

• Cost: For small-scale industries, cost is always an important factor before introducing any new technology. Material handling is never considered to add any value to the production and so nobody ever thinks of investing their limited funds for it. Moreover, the AGVs currently available in the markets are very expensive and obviously out of budget for such small businesses. This is where RAGHAV likes to differ as it is superbly affordable and comes in different load variants according to customer requirements. Not just that, RAGHAV can actually contribute positively to a company’s output. Let’s take an example of small cosmetics industry that makes shampoos, lotions, body washes and hair oils. All of these are packed and stored separately in separate warehouses. Even if they have to carry say 250 Kg of load at one time, it will take at least 4 men to carry this at a time or 1 man to make 4 rounds. Whereas even the basic variant of RAGHAV can carry this load in one go. So, these 4 men can do better productive work. RAGHAV comes with automatic pick and place mechanism so not a single person is required for loading or unloading the units. Since it is an AGV, it runs on the predefined path and does not have to be controlled manually making it easier to operate. What’s more? It is easier to maintain at low cost. This automatically improves the productivity by reducing the overall expense.

• Space Crunch: Small-scale industries do not have the liberty of abundant separate spaces for each operation. If you have ever visited a small company, you would have noticed that their typical layout hardly leaves any space for additional modifications for automation of material handling, as most of the space is taken up by the manufacturing activities. This makes it impossible to set up huge conveyor belts or fork lifts or pallets. But RAGHAV is very small in size and hence can be installed in confined spaces also. Additionally, it does not require any floor or trolly modifications and is very easy to install. This makes it ideal for small-scale industries.

Based on all our discussions till now, we think RAGHAV is an excellent solution for material handling needs for all types of manufacturing industries, small or large. What do you think? Please let us know your views in the comments section below.