ProMat 2019: Heavy Duty Industrial Material Handling Carts and Industry 4.0

February 21, 2019 Fork Truck Free Info 3755 Views

Industry 4.0 FTF (Fork Truck Free) initiatives are critical when leveraging data in a material handling processes. Balancing the traditional material flow delivery challenges in a manufacturing plant floor must be balanced with the new use of major data collection.

Heavy-duty industrial carts are being tugged by Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) which are collecting massive data. Whether driven by automation, the factors of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) and Big Data, simply cannot be ignore.

Industrial Material Handling Carts Digitalization is disrupting traditional operations and business models across a number of market sectors and this naturally impacts on the supply chain.

An increase of 10 percent in a country’s digitization score fuels a 0.75 percent growth in its GDP per capita; this demands a response in order to remain competitive. The response of Logistics 4.0 now provides data transparency over all distribution channels, allowing inventory optimization across all internal and external warehouse locations, through to items stored at the sites of suppliers.

Markus Löffler, digital expert with global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, gave this view, “Most companies think of physical flows – meaning the flow of material components through the supply chain – as separate from information flows and then consider how and where to co-ordinate and synchronize them. After the fourth industrial revolution, there will no longer be a difference between information and materials, because products will be inextricably linked to ‘their’ information.”

AGVs with Material Handling Carts Define Smart Logistics Technology

Smart technology is already in place in modern warehouses, especially those that feature a high degree of automation. Totes, as well as garment hangers and bags on overhead sortation systems, can be fitted with RFID tags so that their contents are locatable at any time. AGV systems, which have been in use in distribution and production environments since the 1970s, have recently been developed with the addition of swarm intelligence. Virtual and physical worlds in the warehouse can be fused through the use of augmented reality systems that communicate process information – such as picking requirements – to workers.

During ProMat 2019 the inroads of IIoT in logistics will demonstrate timely preventative maintenance and optimization of the spare parts inventory. ProMat is a great place to witness of successful implementations of Logistics 4.0; this will require warehouses to become more automated. There is a reasonable amount of automation in the logistics industry today, although little of it could be described as robotic, due to the complex nature of the picking and sorting tasks involved. Traditional robots have been adept at repeatable tasks in a controlled environment – such as moving heavy but identical metal parts on a car production line. Advances in sensor technology allow robots to react dynamically to their environment.

These new robots are sufficiently intelligent to ‘learn’ from their environment and are therefore considered to be safe enough to work alongside humans without the requirement for fencing and other safety precautions.

Topper Industrial is exhibiting at ProMat in Chicago at Booth #S4812 from April 8 – 11. Topper Industrial education session is titled, “Why is Cart Delivery in High Demand?” in Theater I at 1:30 pm on Tuesday, April 9, 2019 and repeated on Wednesday, April 10, 2019 at 10:30 am in Theater E. Visit our booth at ProMat.

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