Material Transport Equipment

in Manufacturing Automation
Five categories:
2. Industrial trucks
3. Automated guided vehicles
4. Monorails and other rail guided
vehicles
5. Conveyors
6. Cranes and hoists
 Industrial Trucks
Two basic categories:
2.Non-powered
– Human workers push or pull loads
3.Powered
– Self-propelled, guided or driven by
human
– Common example: forklift truck
 Nonpowered Industrial
Trucks
(Hand Trucks)

(a) Two-wheel hand truck, (b) four-wheel dolly, (c) hand-operated low-lift
pallet truck
 Unit Load Containers

(a) Wooden pallet, (b) pallet box, (c) tote box

 Powered Trucks:
Walkie Truck

• Wheeled forks insert into pallet

openings
• No provision for riding; truck is steered
by worker using control handle at front
of vehicle
 Powered Trucks:
Forklift Truck
• Widely used in
factories and
warehouses
because pallet
loads are so
common
• Capacities from 450
kg (1000 lb) up to
4500 kg (10,000 lb)
• Power sources
include on-board
batteries and
internal combustion
motors
 Powered Trucks:Towing
Tractor

• Designed to pull one or more trailing carts

in factories and warehouses, as well as for
airport baggage handling
• Powered by on-board batteries or IC engines
 Automated Guided
Vehicles
An Automated Guided Vehicle System
(AGVS) is a material handling system
that uses independently operated, self-
propelled vehicles guided along defined
pathways in the facility floor
• Types of AGV:
– Driverless trains
– Pallet trucks
– Unit load AGVs
 Automated Guided Vehicles:
Driverless Automated Guided
Train
• First type of
AGVS to be
introduced
around 1954
• Common
application is
moving heavy
payloads over
long distances in
warehouses and
factories without
intermediate
stops along the
route
 Automated Guided
Vehicles:
AGV Pallet Truck
• Used to move
palletized loads
along
predetermined
routes
• Vehicle is
backed into
loaded pallet by
worker; pallet is
then elevated
from floor
• Worker drives
pallet truck to
AGV guide path
and programs
 Automated Guided
Vehicles:
Unit Load Carrier

• Used to move unit loads from station to

station
• Often equipped for automatic
loading/unloading of pallets and tote
pans using roller conveyors, moving
belts, or mechanized lift platforms
 AGVs Applications
 Driverless train operations - movement of
large quantities of material over long
distances
 Storage and distribution - movement of
pallet loads between shipping/receiving
docks and storage racks
 Assembly line operations - movement of car
bodies and major subassemblies (motors)
through the assembly stations
 Flexible manufacturing systems - movement
of workparts between machine tools
 Miscellaneous - mail delivery and hospital
supplies
 Vehicle Guidance
Technology
• Method by which AGVS pathways are defined and vehicles
are controlled to follow the pathways
• Three main technologies:
– Imbedded guide wires - guide wires in the floor emit
electromagnetic signal that the vehicles follow
– Paint strips - optical sensors on-board vehicles track the
white paint strips
– Self-guided vehicles - vehicles use a combination of
• Dead reckoning - vehicle counts wheel turns in given
direction to move without guidance
• Beacons located throughout facility - vehicle uses
triangulation to compute locations
Vehicle Guidance Using
Guide Wire
 Vehicle Management
Two aspects of vehicle management:
• Traffic control - to minimize interference
between vehicles and prevent collisions
1. Forward (on-board vehicle) sensing
2. Zone control
• Vehicle dispatching
1. On-board control panel
2. Remote call stations
3. Central computer control
 Zone Control

Zone control to implement blocking system. Zones A, B, and D are blocked.

Zone C is free. Vehicle 2 is blocked from entering Zone A by vehicle 1.
Vehicle 3 is free to enter Zone C.
Material Handling::Total Transport Work
(TTW)
Rf = flow rate (pieces/hr)
Ld = length of delivery (m) in the
factory or warehouse,
TW= transport work
TW = Rf Ld
These deliveries can be aggregated to
determine the total transport work (TTW) by
summing up the individual values of transport
work (TW) for each delivery.

The TTW provides a measure of the total

requirements that must be satisfied the
 Losses and Inefficiency of Material Handling
System
•
The material handling system must be designed for a
greater capacity than that given by TTW because of
lost time and inefficiencies in its operation.

• The reasons for the losses and inefficiencies during

operation of the system include
loading and unloading lime,
return trips with no loads,
system downtime for
maintenance and repair
traffic congestion
scheduling problems,
• The losses can be explained by considering a typical
delivery cycle.
• The actual delivery involves the movement of the handling
system carrier (e.g. AGV) over the distance between, the
origination point and the destination point (Ld).

• If VC represent the speed of handling system, then the

time of delivery Td is given by Ld/Vc . This is considered as
productive time of the handling system.
• In addition to this delivery time, each delivery may also
involve a loading and unloading operation,
• these operations often require time that is taken away
from the time available for transporting materials. This time
is called handling lime (Th)
• time of the carriers is spent travelling without a load and this
travel must be considered as inefficiency of the material handling
system.

• If the distance of the empty move is given by Le, the empty

travelling time (Te) is Le/VC.

• The inefficiency of the material handling system is also due to

traffic congestion and poor scheduling.

• The inefficiencies are defined by a term called traffic factor (Ft).

• For material handling systems in which the losses of this type are
negligible, the traffic factor has a value of 1.0.
• For other systems, such as AGV, the traffic factor may be 0.85 or
less.

• The various losses can be incorporated into a measure of

efficiency of material handing system, as Eh

 Number of AGVs
• Each manufacturing cell is interlinked by
automated material handling system, like AGV or
conveyor.
• One of the important decision variable is how
many AGVs are required for material handling
within a manufacturing cell.
• With proper planning in dispatching and
scheduling methods, the length of empty travel
by AGV in each cell can be reduced, thereby
reducing the number of AGV’s required.
• If a layout is designed with a minimum number of
vehicles, without sacrificing the material handling
requirements, the traffic problem can be avoided.
• With the help of quantitative analysis of AGV
system, the material flow rates, the operation
Travel time TV by an AGV per
delivery in minutes is given by;

Tv  Td  Th  Te min

Ld
where, Td 
Vc

Le
Te 
Vc
• The number of deliveries per hour made by
each vehicle could be determined by taking the
reciprocal of Tv.
• However, the traffic losses can have a
significant effect on the performance of an AGV
system.
• The sources of inefficiency in AGVs that are
accounted for by the traffic factor including
•
blocking of vehicles
waiting at intersections,
vehicles waiting in line
poor scheduling
inefficient routing of vehicles
poor layout of the guided path.
•  
• The typical values of the traffic factor for an
AGV range between 0.85 and 1.0.
Eh = Overall efficiency of
the material handling
system
 Td 
Eh    Ft
 Td  Th  Te 

 Td 
=   Ft
 Tv 
TTW
Re quired System Capacity 
Eh
Number of AGVs
AGV TRAVEL PATHS
Determination of Required AGVs in a Typical FMS Layout
Case l
• The vehicle must return to pickup station after making each drop-
off at the work centre. Figure 3 shows the layout of AGVs for a
production system.
Assume all AGVs first return to station 5 and 1 after making drop-
off at stations 2, 3 and 4, the AGV travels at 45 m/mm and the
anticipated traffic factor is 0.85.
• For this layout, the from-to-charts developed are shown in Tables
1 and 2.
• The layout consists of a load station (station 1) from where raw
work parts enter the system for delivery to any of the three
production work stations (stations 2, 3 and 4). An unload station
(station 3) is used to receive the finished parts from the
production stations. The load and unload time at stations 1 and 5
are 0.5 mm each. The production rates for each work station are
indicated by the delivery requirements in Table I and distances
between different stations in Table 2.
• Ignoring the effects of slightly shorter distances around the curves
and at the corners of the loop, the value of average distance for a
Number of deliveries
 Empty Travels
• Determination of Le, the average distance that a
vehicle travels empty for each delivery is more
complicated.
• It depends upon the dispatching and scheduling
methods that are used to decide as to how a vehicle
should proceed from its last drop-off to its next pick-
up.
• Here the vehicles were to travel back to starting point
(stations 5 and 1) after each drop-off at a production
work station (stations 2, 3 and 4). Assume AGVs are
travelling in unidirectional path, the distances
Loaded & Empty Travels
Length of Empty Travels
Number of AGVs
• Case2
The vehicle can do both loading a raw
work part and unloading a finished part
while it is stopping at a given work station.
• In Case 1, it has been observed that the
length of empty move is greater than the
length of delivery, which in turn increases
the number of AGVs required.
• Suppose that vehicle can unload finished
parts and load raw parts at the same station
(stations 2, 3 and 4) so as to minimize the
distances the vehicle will be travelling
empty.
•
For this configuration from-to-chart showing
distances between different stations are
shown in Table 2.
• The number of deliveries and returns
Loaded & Empty Travels
Revised
Length of Loaded Travels
Handling Efficiency
  Ld  
   
V
 c 
Eh    F
t
  L   Le  
  d  T
 h    
  Vc  V
 c 

  110.7  
   
Eh    45 
  0.85 
  110.7   1.00   14.28  
  45   45  

 Number of AGVs

No of deliveries per
hour per vehicle
v Eh Ld
Dh  , where Td 
Td 60 Vc

Dh42
N AGV    3.11
v 13.5
Dh