Ausnutria, a leading infant nutrition producer based in the Netherlands, integrated four automated guided vehicles at one of their production sites.
Ausnutria aimed to improve operational efficiency, prevent production stoppages, and ease the workload of its personnel. The project demonstrates the benefit of automating intralogistics in a hygiene-critical manufacturing environment while acknowledging some of the initial hurdles that needed to be overcome.
Prior to adopting automation, similar operations on other production lines were performed manually using forklifts.
Strict hygiene standards at the facility dictate that all personnel entering the medium and high care areas must change into sterile clothing which incurs added time and cost.
The AGV specific production line required a fresh approach. Ausnutria faced the challenge of designing procedures from scratch, ensuring the seamless integration of the AGVs in their medium care and high care hygiene zones while also managing the complexity of interfaces with adjacent systems. Their employees needed to adapt to the presence of the AGVs, requiring heightened awareness and new training programs.
Oceaneering Mobile Robotics (OMR) provided a tailored solution, deploying four CompactMover™ forklifts, each dedicated to specific hygiene zones.
The AGVs were programmed to follow fixed routes, with individual vehicles assigned to transport raw materials to production and others configured to move finished products to the warehouse. As eliminating cross-contamination was a top priority, products needed to be passed through material airlocks from the high care area to the medium care area and from the medium care area to the basic care area.
Ausnutria and Oceaneering collaborated closely to develop the required routes and interfaces with the adjacent systems. There was also an emphasis on site and system specific training for Ausnutria’s operators and technical staff.
In 2025, an OMR team was mobilized to Ausnutria’s Heerenveen facility to install the system. The project moved smoothly from installation through commissioning, with only minor issues identified after go‑live that required optimization. To address these, we conducted several follow‑up visits to fine‑tune performance and ensure the system met all requirements, including a key performance indicator focused on total pallet throughput.
We also supported the transition by providing operator and technical training, along with recommendations for ongoing support, including the development of new work instructions. As this was a greenfield application, all operational procedures were developed specifically for this system. In parallel, our teams installed remote IO boxes to enable seamless integration with automatic doors, airlocks, pallet dispensers, filling lines, and high‑bay warehouse conveyors.
The CompactMover™ automated guided vehicle system has significantly reduced manual forklift work and improved the precision of internal material handling.
Through extensive optimization and coordinated workflows between the medium‑care and basic‑care hygiene zones, the system is capable of handling up to twelve pallets per hour. The end‑to‑end process includes collecting an empty pallet from the pallet warehouse, cleaning the pallet, transporting it to and from the filling line, and delivering the filled big bag to the high‑bay warehouse conveyor.
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