Automated Guided Vehicle Systems Trends in Technology and Application

Author(s):  
L. Schulze ◽  
M. Lucas ◽  
A. Baumann

The automation of transportation in the production, trade and service sector is a key point in the optimization of logistics. For this task Automated Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVS) provide special benefits. Main points of these systems are the central controlled Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV). In the beginning, the vehicles were guided by optical or inductive guidelines. The main disadvantages of guidelines are the inflexibility regarding the modification and changing of the routing and the necessity of installations on or in the ground. New developments result in guidance without guidelines. An example of this development is the laser guidance for the AGV. The AGVs have a high individuality. They are usually developed and constructed for the demands of a special application and are therefore unique. Due to this individuality a special problem is the wide variety of maintenance and part logistics. Research and development leads to new approaches to this question. Examples are the implementation of the modulation of AGV and the implementation of construction kits. Further points are the reduction of complexity of the modules and the establishment of compatibility between various AGVS-producers. Another main direction of the development is the supplementary automation of standard fork lift trucks. At the Department of Planning and Controlling of Transport Systems and Warehouses, University of Hanover (PSLT), an AGV was developed and established for further research. This AGV is used for verification and validation of new hardware and software components, like safety, navigation or controlling parts. It is strictly modular composed and offers a high adaptation in different directions. Based on the AGVS-Statistic Europe, which is created and administrated by the department PSLT, the main application of AGVS and the industrial sectors in which they are used are analyzed. With this database developments and current trends in the AGVS-sector are identified. More and more the AGVS-producers have to offer their products in a global competition. The relevance of AGVS in the area of automation will increase in the future.

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
Ahmad Daragmeh ◽  
Judit Bárczi

Employing firm’s resources in a way can satisfy the unexpected needs of customers in less costs, which helps a firm to achieve a competitive edge against competitors considers the main goal for any business director. From other side, customers would prefer to deal with firms that offer goods and services with high level of quality, reliability and those at par with international standards. This has given the birth to the concept of TQM in service sector after proofing success in industrial sectors. The aim of the paper is to investigate the level of compliance to TQM practices in Banking sector in Palestine. In the beginning researcher reviewed literature studies to develop a knowledge about TQM practices (Leadership and Human resources development & management) in specific. and try to investigate the relationship between TQM practices and bank’s efficiency. Then, researcher have prepared a questionnaire to measure the level of compliance of Palestinian banks to TQM practices. 100 questionnaires have distributed for the bank employees, who work in different positions and departments. The results showed that less concern to TQM practices in leadership system, human resource development and management. Finally, researcher recommended that banks should give more attention to motivate employees through satisfying them financially and activate their role in decision making and work in a team soul.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parham Azimi

The aim of the current research is to propose a new generation of automated guided vehicle systems for alleviating the collision states in material handling systems where the automated guided vehicles movements are allowed to be both unidirectional and bidirectional. The objective function is to maximize the average annual profit in an FMS system using a simulation method. Despite several researches done in this field, this criterion has been studied rarely. The current study includes some new changes in AGV design for preventing some common problems such as congestions and deadlocks based on real profits/costs analysis in a flexible manufacturing system. For this reason, some experiments have been carried out to study the effects of several empty vehicle dispatching rules on average annual profit. The results show that the proposed framework is efficient and robust enough for industrial environments.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Randula L. Hettiarachchi ◽  
Pisut Koomsap ◽  
Panarpa Ardneam

PurposeAn inherent problem on risk priority number (RPN) value duplication of traditional failure modes and effect analysis (FMEA) also exists in two customer-oriented FMEAs. One has no unique value, and another has 1% unique values out of 4,000 possible values. The RPN value duplication has motivated the development of a new customer-oriented FMEA presented in this paper to achieve practically all 4,000 unique values and delivering reliable prioritization.Design/methodology/approachThe drastic improvement is the result of power-law and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR). By having all three risk factors in a power-law form, all unique values can be obtained, and by applying VIKOR to these power-law terms, the prioritization is more practical and reliable.FindingsThe proposed VIKOR power law-based customer-oriented FMEA can achieve practically all 4,000 unique values and is tested with two case studies. The results are more logical than the results from the other two customer-oriented FMEAs.Research limitations/implicationsThe evaluation has been done on two case studies for the service sector. Therefore, additional case studies in other industrial sectors will be required to confirm the effectiveness of this new customer-oriented RPN calculation.Originality/valueAchieving all 1,000 unique values could only be done by having experts tabulate all possible combinations for the traditional FMEA. Therefore, achieving all 4,000 unique values will be much more challenging. A customer-oriented FMEA has been developed to achieve practically all 4,000 unique risk priority numbers, and that the prioritization is more practical and reliable. Furthermore, it has a connection to the traditional FMEA, which helps explain the traditional one from a broader perspective.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasaki Dauda ◽  
Omowumi Ajeigbe

This study assessed employment intensity of growth (EIG) in the agriculture, industry and service sectors in Nigeria from 1991 to 2019 within the context of Okun’s theory/law. Data from the 2020 World Development Indicators were employed for analysis, using elasticity procedure after decomposing the scope into different periods and regimes. The findings showed negative EIG in the agriculture and industrial sectors while the service sector returned positive EIG. Therefore, government should invest significantly in the service sector while the agricultural sector should be mechanized to boost output and supply of raw materials to industries to enhance employment generation.


Author(s):  
Tomasz Lewowski

This paper is a case study of the development of a localization and positioning subsystem of an Automated Guided Vehicle-based transportation system. The described system uses primarily RFID markers for localization. In some deployments, those markers occasionally fail, mostly due to being crushed by cargo platforms operated by a human or due to internal defects. Those failures are not common enough to warrant switching from marker-based localization to a more sophisticated technique, but they require additional effort from maintenance staff. In this case study, we present our solution to this problem – a self-tuning algorithm that is able to detect marker failures and, in most cases, keep the system operational. The paper briefly discusses business circumstances under which such a solution is reasonable and then describes in detail the entire technical process, including data acquisition, verification, algorithm development and finally, the result of deploying the system in production.


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