The object under investigation in this work is a portal robot used for the production of large fibre reinforced structures. The achieved product quality and the production speed of the device are influenced by the vibration and the damping behaviour of the system. The required process time is determined by kinematic parameters, i.e. speed and acceleration of the system and the dead time required for the vibration level to decay to a threshold level given by the required precision of process. In the first step, a Design of Experiments is used in order to identify the ideal combination of acceleration and speed. At this optimum, the sum of the drive time and the dead time reaches a minimum for a given precision. In the second step, an experimental Modal Analysis is performed in order to identify the potential for an optimization of the structure.