An independent German logistics prize group has named the six winners of its International Intralogistics and Forklift Truck of the Year (IFOY) prizes, awarded Friday in Vienna, Austria.
Top honors went to: Jungheinrich, RAVAS EUROPE, SAFELOG with Mercedes, SSI Schäfer, and STILL, and the IFOY Start-up of the Year Award went to Brightpick. The winners came from a pool of 17 finalists, which had been winnowed down in January from a starting field of 35 entrants.
“The best of the best made it to the final and rarely before have the test teams and jury discussed so intensively and struggled to make the best choice. In addition to novelty value, customer benefit and practicability were ultimately the deciding factors in the final,” Anita Würmser, executive chairwoman of the IFOY jury, said in a release.
IFOY says nominees are not compared with each other, but with their competitors on the market. The group chooses awards winners through a three-step process, including an IFOY test protocol of around 80 criteria, the scientific IFOY Innovation Check, and the final selection of winners by an independent jury of international trade journalists. This year, that jury of 26 international journalists included this magazine’s own David Maloney, editorial director of DC Velocity and Supply Chain Xchange magazines.
The Munich-based group is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, and supported by the Materials Handling and Intralogistics Association and the Robotics + Automation Association within the German manufacturing trade group VDMA. The application phase for next year’s IFOY AWARD starts on August 1.
PROFILES OF THE WINNERS
The winner in the “Warehouse Truck highlifter” category is the EJC 112i from Jungheinrich. The compact highlifter, which can be charged at any power socket, delivered an impressive performance in the IFOY audit, proving its position as the new benchmark in the entry-level segment for pedestrian stackers. The jury was particularly impressed by the intuitive operation, the small turning circle and the exceptionally high lifting and lowering speeds. The residual load capacity of 1,433 pounds at a height of 15 feet is the new benchmark in this class.
After an exciting finish in the “Special of the Year” category, RAVAS EUROPE wins with iCP Carriage Plate Scale with Weighing-in-Motion technology for calibrated weighing of the load during transportation. The basis for iCP is an existing weighing system. The intelligence lies in a smart box and the algorithms developed by RAVAS, which provide reliable measurements even on uneven ground. The decisive factor for the jury's vote was that Legal for Trade customers can bill on the basis of weight with the OIML-certified system.
The highly competitive “Mobile Robot” category was won by the series-based EXV iGo from STILL. The automated pallet truck for production supply and the pre-storage zone can be operated both manually and automatically. It offers a high residual load capacity of up to 3,500 pounds, can lift goods up to 12.5 feet and achieves a remarkable speed of up to 4.5 mph. The quick commissioning in combination with a new, intuitive user interface makes the series-based mobile robot a smart door opener into the world of automated warehouse processes, especially for SMEs, according to the jury.
In the “Stationary Robot” category, the SSI Piece Picking module from SSI SCHAEFER came out on top after a thrilling finish. The robot cell in container format for piece picking takes care of feeding, removal and safety technology. SSI SCHAEFER has found solutions for typical gripping errors, double picks or incorrect depositing. Centrifugal forces, which occur with articulated robots, are also a thing of the past; this is ensured by a miniature gantry robot with suction cups, which moves the gripper to any position on the source and target containers and handles even sensitive goods safely. The jury was particularly impressed by the short set up time of just one day.
SAFELOG won the IFOY AWARD 2024 in the top category “Integrated Customer Solution” for its AGV swarm in the Mercedes Factory 46. The jury selected the future vision of the Mercedes-Benz production system, which was developed and implemented in close cooperation between SAFELOG and the car manufacturer, as the best customer solution of the year. Mercedes-Benz is responsible for the software, while SAFELOG is responsible for the hardware, including around 350 AGVs, and the project implementation. The jury particularly emphasized the high customer benefit: this starts with the low price and the robust implementation, extends to the software ecosystem developed together with Mercedes and ends with an availability of 99.7 to 99.9%, which in practice means 40 hours less downtime.
A total of four young companies competed for victory at the IFOY Start-up of the Year Award. Intralogistics shooting star Brightpick won the race with the world's first autonomous, mobile picking robot Brightpick Autopicker. The AI-based 2-in-1 robot from the company, which was founded in Bratislava in 2021, picks while driving in the rack aisle without the robot having to return to a base station. It can also be used for other tasks such as pallet picking, warehouse replenishment, dynamic storage or normal goods-to-person picking. The jury particularly emphasized this versatility as well as the 50% reduction in picking costs.
