Dematic to automate material flow for plastics manufacturer

Posted on Feb 7, 2019 in Nuts & Bolts

Dematic, a global supplier of integrated automated technology, software and services to optimize the supply chain, has been selected by a plastics manufacturing company to design and implement an Automated Guided Vehicle System (AGVS) for intra-plant delivery of materials. The manufacturer specializes in plastic injection molding and produces plastic parts for the medical, personal care and packaging industries.

The system is designed to automate the material flow from production. It will include a fleet of counterbalanced fork AGVs. The AGVs will pick up tubs of plastic product at manufacturing and transport to the warehouse. The loads can be stacked up to six levels high without racking. For outbound load movement, the AGVs will pick up tubs of finished goods from the warehouse and transport to the shipping dock. The system is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2019.

The Dematic System software manages and controls the AGV fleet to optimize task assignments of intra-plant movement of materials. An interface to the host ERP is included to support lot control and quality auditing. For onboard controls, the AGVs use a combination of laser and natural target guidance.