High-Flex Automated Warehouse Solution Applied in Auto Parts Industry

Abstract: Affected by the change of international automotive consumption structure, OBM dynamically adjust their capital investment in R&D, manufacturing, management and many other aspects. Flexibly automatic warehousing solution has become the first choice of many B-end customers because it can increase storage capacity and reduce unit storage cost.

Warehouse of Auto Parts

Rigid Transportation Demand for Auto Parts Manufacturer

A few days ago, VisionNav Robotics completed the implementation of an unmanned warehousing solution for a auto parts manufacturer giant in South China. The company is a Sino-Japanese joint venture with an area of nearly 130,000 square meters. There are more than 1,500 employees and the total number of storage locations per floor is more than 5,000. Its main business includes manufacturing of stamping and welding parts for car body, the design and manufacture of stamping die for the covers of car body, tire of the car, car fixtures, design and manufacturing of inspection device, etc., which indicates huge demands of material handling.

Automotive Auto Part Production Line

Unmanned Stacking Solution for Stamping Die for the Covers of Car Body

There are multifarious types of auto parts in the factory. Welding workshop of car body covers and finished goods stockpiling area are located in a square area on the first floor. After finishing stamping, welding, quality inspection and other production processes in the central area, each 10-12 parts will be put into the same frame and manually transported to the nearby temporary stockpiling area. All the trucks are waiting at corresponding platform for loading and then send to downstream final-assembly workshop for car assembly process. Because the size of auto parts are so different, there are 50 different types of material frame in use for storage in the factory.

Irregular Auto Parts

There is an independent storage unit every 100 square meters in stockpiling area, equipped with 2 pallet forklifts and one counterbalance forklift for frame stacking and loading to the truck in the unit. People who working From production to storage, people who are working in the entire process involves welding workers, stamping workers, quality inspectors, material handlers between production lines and storage area, forklift drivers, and on-site dispatch workers. In order to adapt to production cycle time, the factory is running three shifts operation.

 Auto Parts Stockpiling Area

Business Pain Point

From the lean production prospect, there are significant wastes during the production activities, which can be summarized as below:

1. Redundant transportation —— unnecessary goods movements;
2. Waiting —— it’s easy to have “traffic jam” during the peak of delivery bringing waiting; Late delivery or service in upstream production activities causes work delay in downstream final assembly workshop, which thereby will have impact material deployment plan for the next cycle.
3. Excess operation —— unnecessary operation during the work; Operators need to confirm twice before loading to the truck, such extra process reduces working efficiency.
4. Manual forklift varies in operation efficiency, it takes less than 2 minutes to stack the first 2-3 level of the cages, but working efficiency drops at a rate of 50% for 4-6 level due to the changes of the height and angle.

The above four factors are positively related to the number of on-site personnel, therefore optimizing transportation process, reducing personnel and keep the balance of transportation during the operation become the focus of our consideration

Workers Manually Transport the Goods

Unmanned Warehouse Solution

We provide solutions considering four aspects, which is functional positioning, process optimization, personnel streamlining and equipment upgrading:

All stockpiling areas will be divided into function units of 100 square meters. 7 units which are closer to the outbound platform is used for quick deliver and only keeping ready-to-go cages for the day. Other finished goods will be stored uniformly into the stockpiling units that away from the platform.

Set up fixed route for material transfer from production line to stockpiling area, and use 8 pallet forklift AGV to complete the transportation, not including truck loading. Travel distance for each vehicle is no more than 100 meters.

• Use 1 VisionNav Robotics counterbalanced forklift AGV to stack cages automatically in each stockpiling unit. Not using manual forklift anymore, and it will only takes 1 operator to work 3 shifts in each stockpiling unit.
• For the problem of different cage specification, adding self-adaptive fork arm function in the automated forklift enable to accurately fork and pile cages according to different distance and height in three dimensions.

Operation of the Unmanned Forklift

Overall Benefits

• Carrier: the number of manual forklift and forklift driver reduce by N-1 when using unmanned forklift;
• Flow Direction: clearer flow direction from production line to stockpiling units has been specified to reduce waiting time and traffic jam of the forklifts
• Capacity: unmanned forklift works continuously and completes stacking of 600-700 material cages stably every day;
• Flow Travel: save 1km driving mileage for each forklift
• Flow Efficiency: stabilize the supply to downstream components, reduce the fluctuation range of the production and distribution plan, and improve overall production efficiency by 70%

Automated Stacking Operation Area

Automated Stacking Solution for Car Tyres

Considering the great benefit of cage stacking in the first phase, currently customer plans to launch the second phase project, car tyres unmanned transportation. The transportation process for the tyres is relatively simple. The warehouse is mainly for storage; and all the tires are packed into material cages of same size and specification. There are 10 tyres in each cage and the height of a cage is about 1.5m. The idea is to have 6 cages stacking on top of each other in each location to maximum the utilization of storage space.

The biggest problem is when stacking to 4-6 layers, the operation efficiency of manual forklift drops dramatically, while coefficient of unsafety increases. The solution from VisionNav Robotics is to use their reach forklift AGV, which is capable for 9m stacking. It takes on average 15 minutes for each process, and such stability becomes the biggest advantage when no rush delivery is required.

A Demonstration of Stacking 3 Layer Cages for Car Tyre

Technology of Irregular Part Unmanned Transportation Scenario Is Mature Now

For manufacturing industry, stacking material cages / frames is rigid demand. Compared to the racks, cages can make better use of the space in a warehouse. For low level stacking (2-3 layers), manual forklift have more advantage than unmanned forklift; for high level stacking (4-6 layers), however, unmanned forklift have more advantage in turn. The advantage of VisionNav Robotics unmanned forklift lies in its fork arm self-adaptive adjustment, and real time positioning deviation correction, which can bring stable efficiency to load and unload goods every time, and lower operational danger. It’s a great benefit for plants and warehouses with large areas and large scale of massive production.

VisionNav Robotics have rich experience on handling complicated scenarios, we’ve identified and stack cages and frames with over 150 specifications accurately and automatically so far. Recently, VisionNav Robotics is preparing a new test for irregular part unmanned transportation project. Apart from the iteration of fork arm self-adaptive function 2.0 version, the algorithm about robot control and perception level has also been optimize and upgraded. And for further information, please stay tune and find more details in the upcoming application updates.