The application of unmanned forklifts in home appliance manufacturers has helped the group's smart factory advance layout

Flexible unmanned logistics solution can play an important role in home appliance manufacturing enterprises. In this article, we take the example of a world-known home appliance group company, and fully introduce the unmanned application in their intra-logistics, from project requirement, proposal development, to project introduction and others. The project has realized automatic and unmanned management from the production line to finished goods outbound.

In the past 40 years, China's home appliance industry has undergone the evolution from large-scale production, to mechanized production and to automated production. With the diversified consumer needs and the promotion of "new retail" model, traditional home appliance manufacturing model is quite difficult to meet market expectations. Thus many forward-looking companies have begun to seek a breakthrough for their development, using new technology to complete industry upgrades has become an industry consensus.

Project Requirement
 

The group company is the leading manufacturer of home appliances. Ranking world's top 500, it has a pivotal position in the home appliances industry. The group company owns 15 production base in and outside China. With the goal of “Smart Factory”, the entire group is working on intelligent upgrading in depth. The first batch of the projects are implemented in Zhuhai Guangdong, Meishan Sichuan, Ma Anshan Anhui and Nanjing Jiangsu, which are their main production bases, to enable unmanned intra-logistics during the enamelled wire production processes.

Enamelled wire is an indispensable material to many home appliances core components。 It’s heavyweight and special carrier shall be used for load and unload. Therefore, the operational requirement for internal transportation is relatively high. The process for this project includes: transporting material from high speed machine to temporary warehouse beside production line, from packing area to finished goods warehouse, and transportation of finished goods and semi-finished goods between different workshops. The bare wires will be transported by cylindrical baskets, pallets or roller cages, total self-weight is 1t to 1.5t. The goal is to achieve fully unmanned transportation and automatic management in above mentioned processes so as to increase operation efficiency and reduce labor cost.

Processes and Material Information

Solution and Project Deployment

After site investigation, VisionNav proposed a smart and reproducible unmanned logistics solution based on automated guided vehicles and intelligent scheduling system. We use different automated guided forklifts for different processes: pallet mover AGV (VNT20), Slim pallet stacker AGV (SLIML14), reach truck AGV (VNR16) and unmanned tractor (VNQ60). VisionNav also provide our own central control system for the entire project. There is no reflectors or magnetic tapes installed, no need to modify the sites, giving more flexibility and scalability.

01.  System Deployment

Customer already has its own MES system, VisionNav central dispatch system can seamless integrate with existing system to realize data accuracy. Information control mode: Party A scans label by a handheld terminal (hereinafter referred to as "PDA"), the MES system sends transportation command information.

02.  Bare wire area – High-speed machine

• High-speed machine: 20
• Carrier: wire basket+ wire circle
• Weight:≤2000kg
• AGV Type: Palletmover AGV (VNT20) 3 units

Highlight: the baskets are customized carriers, there are fixed picking place for VisionNav’s AGV to detect the picking point and pick the basket with self-adaptive perception, to increase operational efficiency.

03.  Drawbench– Buffer Storage –Woven Machine
 

• Drawbench: 20
• Woven Machine: 8
• Racking level: 3
• AGV type: Slim pallet stackerAGV (SLIML14) 7 units

Highlight: the use of slim design forklift AGV can reduce aisle width between racks from 3.2m to 2m, increasing storage capacity. In the meanwhile, forklift AGV will need to dock with auto roller doors automatically due to cross-workshop transportation. Safety scanner is installed in front of the forklifts, door status can be detected when AGV is passing through the doors and roller door lift up and down can be controlled as well.

Project Result

Solutions have been successfully applied in customer’s production base in Zhuhai, Meishan, Ma Anshan and Nanjing, to realize unmanned transportation from raw material to production line, from buffer storage to FG warehouse, replacing labor effectively and increase operation accuracy.

§ Reduce labor: after havingunmanned forklifts, customer can achieve 24/7 operation, replacing previous shifts operation, reducing at least 12 operators;

§ Smart management: scheduling system can interact information flow and material flow to realize digitalization, automation and smart management.

§ Increase accuracy: Auto replenishment, material transit and storage can be achieved in the production, achieving “in-time” logistics and adaptive to production frequency quickly and reduce human error.

Customer also comment that “VisionNav Robotics has a profound research and development foundation in automated guided forklifts, with advanced vision technology and stable products, I’m surely they can provide good service and help us to build ‘Smart factory’ in the future.”