Master Thesis – Environmental impact of an AGV-system!

Are you a student within e.g. Sustainable Energy Systems or similar and looking for a master thesis project at a global high-tech product company? We want your help to measure the environmental impact of an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) system!


About the project
Kollmorgen Automation has developed world leading AGV systems for the last 50 years. Kollmorgen's technology is responsible for the operation of a vast number of sites around the world, including logistics center, production plants and many other applications. The target is to provide world leading technology for the rapidly growing market of AGVs and Mobile Robots. The about 100 employees are working with product development, professional services, sales, marketing and finance

While we feel safe to say that we are great at automating transports and intralogistics, we want your help to also improve the environmental impacts of the systems that we operate. In this project we want your help to measure the environmental impact of an AGV system.

Goal of the thesis
We want to become better at identifying what properties of an AGV system in use that has most significant environmental impacts, like energy consumption, material waste, utilization of human resources, land use, etc. How can we measure their impact and how can we convert these measurements into knowledge that can focus our efforts to where it matters the most?

As a result of this thesis work, we see:

- Identified the factors that contribute most to the environmental impact - including reasoning and ways of measuring
- A model that we can use for calculating the climate impact (CO2 emissions) of an AGV system in operation. GHG protocol, Scope 3: Category 11 (Use of Sold Products).
- What factors contribute to emissions when operating an AGV system and how to calculate the emissions




- Suggestions on how we can use the new knowledge in our business and product development.


We believe that this work will have an important impact on our continued contributions towards a more sustainable society.

Method
Proposed method to achieve the results:

- Develop a hypothesis about which factors contribute to the emissions. This is preferably done by literature studies and interviews with Kollmorgen employees.
- Validate the hypothesis by interviewing AGV builders and End-users.
- Define a model for calculating the emissions.

About you
We believe that you are studying a master program in Automation and Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Economy, Sustainable Energy Systems, Mobility Engineering or similar and that you have a genuine interest in this topic.

Number of students
2

Thesis Level
Master

Language
Thesis is to be written in English.

Starting date
January 2023

Location
Kollmorgen Automation Office, Mölndal, Sweden 📍

Other information
We will provide computers and you will get great support from your supervisor and other colleagues!

All students are compensated after the thesis is submitted and the final work meets the quality standard that is generally accepted by the university and presented at Kollmorgen.

Send in your application by submitting a CV and/or information about your studies and a short sentence about why you find this project interesting. If you get selected, the next step will be to have discussions with us to finalize the idea. Selection takes place on an ongoing basis, welcome with your application!

Some of the good things that we offer
Innovation Days every twelve weeks - a 24-hour event for the whole company to dig deeper, explore new areas and solve problems! 💡
Gym at the office filled with machines for strength and fitness that is always open and free to use when you need a break in your thesis work 👟
A bicycle storage and free car parking outside our office 🚲
Be a part of our ordinary events such as monthly breakfast meetings, Day of Caring (every year we take one day to clean the west coast beaches together) etc 🚀
Good fair trade coffee (or tea) with fresh milk (every student who has been up late to study for an exam know how important coffee is) ☕
Fresh fruit if you get hungry 🍌

Contact information
If you have any questions about the thesis, you are welcome to contact Johanna Turesson at johanna.turesson@kollmorgen.com.

Check out more open positions (https://career-agv.kollmorgen.com/jobs),
️ follow us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/kollmorgen.ndc),
get to know us better through our Candidate Blog (https://kollmorgenagv.teamtailor.com/blog),
️ and see videos about our products at our Youtube channel! (https://www.youtube.com/user/ndcsolutions)