The Nestlé central distribution warehouse for Italy located in Albairate (MI) is increasingly loaded with shipments to be distributed throughout Italy.

Management therefore decides to implement an automated handling system with warehouse management software, AGV management, conveyors, and stacker cranes to handle the required flow.

Our system manages multiple subsystems, such as:

• Warehouse management software with semi-automatic three-way stacker cranes
• Management of an AGV system consisting of 12 wire guided vehicles with infrared communication
• Management of a conveyor system consisting of a goods receiving area with shape and weight control, barcode scanning, plus two outgoing conveyors from the warehouse to the shipping area
• Management of outgoing and incoming orders
• Management of the warehouse map
• Management of PLCs and factory hosts
• Management of label printers

Each subsystem has its own in-house developed communication drivers. The most significant work was to optimize the assignment of tasks to the AGVs and three-way stacker cranes to achieve a throughput capacity of 1,200 pallets per shift.

AGV navigation type: inductive wire guidance

Traffic controller: 486 PC, in warm backup, with Digiboard multiserial ports, connected to all devices on the layout, DI/DO signals and infrared transreceivers to communicate with AGVs, plus a serial communication line to communicate with the host.

Charging concept: charging stations with contacts on top of the AGV, when batteries are low, the vehicle is sent there to stay and charge, as well the AGV goes on charger when there are no transports to execute.

This AGV system is working over two shifts, morning and afternoon.

Number of AGVs: 12 + 6 trilaterals semi automatic stacker cranes.

AGV manufacturer: Digitron

Function: AGV traffic controller development, order handling, conveyor handling

Year: 1994