Stephan Elliott, CEO of Noovelia, on the VatorNews innovation podcast

Noovelia automates the entire engineering process for the manufacturing industry Steven Loeb and Bambi Francisco Roizen talk with Stephan Elliott, CEO of Noovelia, a company on a mission to automate the entire engineering process for the manufacturing industry to help overcome the labor shortage. Highlights from the call: “AGV stands for automated guided vehicle, which is a vehicle following a virtual path or a physical path with a magnetic tape line on the ground, with cameras. On the other side, you have AMR, or autonomous mobile robot, which is a little bit higher on the technology level. These vehicles are able to move without anything on the ground or in the space; the vehicle is able to read the area, to understand where it can go, and it doesn’t go other places. You just have to give the vehicle the destination and after that the vehicle designs its own path. That’s why an autonomous mobile robot has more intelligence behind the system.” “It’s possible for any company to have more flexibility with AVG or AMR because, in the past, we did this kind of job with conveyors and forklifts and human, with all the interaction or all the complexity that goes with it. The AMR and AVG increase the flexibility and scalability, because it’s very easy to increase the handling flow just by adding more vehicles to a production line. The initial setup and infrastructure does cost but, after that, it’s very low cost to go in for the next steps. With AMR and AGV, it’s about flexibility, scalability, and you will reduce the mistakes you have on the floor.” “We take employees and put them somewhere they can add value because just bringing a load from point A to B is not an added value to the company. If you have a task where the human can manage and use their mind, ‘okay, I have to go there, I have to adapt my movement with this product,’ you have to increase the level of flexibility with this kind of system. We replace the humans on the conveyor, but not just replace, we make sure the products arrive at the right place at the right moment. This is the biggest gain you can have with AMR because, yeah, you replace and you save one person or you can put this person at another place and you can increase your productivity but, in the end, it’s the timing, it’s the efficiency, it’s the productivity you increase with the vehicle.” “Our business is increasing at an exponential speed right now because now companies see Amazon, they see a lot of very, very large companies have a lot of efficiency. Now, the smallest company, is saying, ‘okay, it’s for me too.’ The technology is right there now, but we have to explain to our customers about the safety side of the technology; an AMR and an AGV, it’s probably the most gentle equipment you can have on the floor, because each time you pass in front of the vehicle it slows down and stops. It’s very safe, it’s very efficient, every company needs to have this technology, but it’s not the case.” “Our technology is unique because we we always try to be in the use case where it’s more difficult for our competitors to go. For example, we are more flexible, so if you want to change the dimension of the vehicle on our side it’s very, very, very easy. We can provide a vehicle that’s four by six foot or we can provide a six by eight, it’s not a problem for us and it’s the same price. If you want to go to a very high capacity, we have some models to 5,000 and 10,000 pounds; normally it’s more around 1,500 or 2,000 pounds, but we go in higher capacity. And it’s a one stop shop, you don’t have to find an automation company for a custom machinery to put special components on the vehicle, it’s at the same place.” “Noovelia will change the way AVGs and AMRs are seen, change the way the implementation works so that the customer does not need to change their entire operations, layout, or plan to include AMR in the business. We want to be very flexible, modular, not necessarily the lowest cost, but the lowest investment. With our scaling plan, we want to be one of the master players in the modular and adaptation AGV and AMR space in North America.”