Blue Atlas Robotics is currently scaling up and thanks to a new collaboration they are now primed for the next part of their journey. A recent project with students from the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and Odense Robotics means the robotics startup now has a plan for optimising their production.
Blue Atlas Robotics develops underwater inspection robots for the maritime sector. User-friendly and time-saving robots that conduct self-operating underwater visual inspection of port structures and vessel hulls, delivering consistent and complete scans of large subsea areas. The company is currently scaling up and a vital part of this hinges on creating a well-structured supply chain and production setup.
As a startup in the transitional phase, all their focus has been on tech development and sales with limited resources for optimising production flows. The company knew that understanding their production and supply chain needs was essential for their future growth. They also knew that they needed help to analyse these needs and develop workflows to handle larger orders if they were to avoid downtime and production setbacks. This is where the collaboration with SDU and Odense Robotics came into play.
“Our collaboration with SDU and Odense Robotics has been a great fit with our scaleup strategy. We have gained new insights into our current production setup and future needs, which we would not have had the time or resources to examine otherwise. This internal awareness of knowing what to do and implement will be invaluable for our future growth and help us avoid future production setbacks. We now have a template we can use as we scale up and our orders increase. We plan to implement several of the plans by the end of the year,” says Mads Andersen, CEO & Co-founder of Blue Atlas Robotics.
Improving production
With the help of Odense Robotics and four Global Management and Manufacturing students from SDU, Blue Atlas Robotics gained new insights into their supply chain and production, while allowing the students to dive into the project as part of their studies.
“Strong supply chain processes are the key to strengthening a company and for Blue Atlas Robotics a structured production setup will help give them a competitive edge in the next part of their scale up journey,” says Kim Als, Business Development Manager at Odense Robotics, who helped guide the collaboration.
“The collaboration meant that the students had the opportunity to help shape the entire supply chain department at Blue Atlas Robotics instead of just one area of it. At the same time, the company has gained a complete plan that they can draw on in the next part of their scale up journey.”
The students conducted thorough analyses of the supply chain processes at Blue Atlas Robotics, guided by Kim Als, who specialises in supply chain optimisation. Kim helped provide the students with insights into the company’s current production setup. The students assessed key areas such as lead times, component sourcing, stock control, exchange rate fluctuation and assembly – before creating a plan for how Blue Atlas Robotics can structure their supply chain and production.
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