YKK Mediterraneo has a pallet warehouse with more than 1,000 locations.

Each pallet contains several boxes with small metal parts.

The AGV system’s purpose is to retrieve the pallet from the warehouse racks and transport it to buffer stations on the ground floor where the operator picks the boxes.

Once the picking operation is complete, the AGV retrieves the pallet from the buffer station and returns it to the warehouse.

There are two forklifts with the ability to pick a pallet from the third level of a rack (ground floor, 1, 2, and 3), then transport it to six buffer stations where an operator picks the boxes on the pallet.

At the end of the operation, the operator uses a control panel and a barcode reader to create a mission to return the pallet to the warehouse location via an AGV.

The AGV traffic control system is connected to a host computer that manages the warehouse map and sends the missions to be executed to the AGV system.

The forklifts are laser-guided and were built by AGVE, a leading company in the industry.

The traffic control system is fully configurable, and almost all changes to the system logic can be accommodated by defining tables.

Commissioning was relatively quick; fine-tuning the heights of the warehouse stations was necessary due to the unevenness of the floor.

AGV navigation type: Laser

Traffic controller: a server provided by the customer with TCP/IP communication toward the field

Charging concept: charging stations with contacts on the side 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: 2

AGV manufacturer: AGVE

Function: Fine tuning and commissioning

Year: 2016