LOOKING AHEAD

Logistics Insight Asia, 1/5/2008

Officially unveiled at this year's NA2008 material handling show in Cleveland, the industry's first industrial mobile robot tugger is already producing good returns for early adopters.

GENCO Supply Chain Solutions is North America's second largest provider of supply chain services. In GENCO's reverse logistics center in Grove City, Ohio, goods returned to retailers are sorted, stripped of their packaging and packed into boxes fordelivery to contract wholesalers.

This creates plenty of garbage – enough to fi ll 30 or more carts in a single shift. Once a cart is full, a teammate must walk it approximately 380 meters to the trash compactor where it is unloaded, then takes an empty cart back to the work area.

This time-consuming work takes teammates away from their primary duties and creates bottlenecks of work for those responsible for trash compacting at the end of each shift.

Looking to reduce the costs associated with processing returns, GENCO learned of a new solution from Seegrid Corp – the GT3, the industry's first industrial mobile robot tugger, which operates without wire guides, magnets, lasers or human intervention. Instead, stereo cameras are used to build a reliable 3D map of the environment. The GT3 then uses the map and its own reasoning ability to navigate a predetermined path to complete its assigned transport task.

Seegrid says its robots diff er from today's AGVs (automatic guided vehicles) in that the autonomous robot behavior, with Sense, Move, Analyze, Interact and Repeat capabilities, delivers AGV-like competence but with greater flexibility and at a considerably lower cost.

GENCO initiated a two-week pilot program using the GT3 to automatically haul full carts to the trash compactor and return with empty carts for operators to use on the line. The GT3's paths were installed in about an hour and workers were trained to use it the same morning.

Now, using the GT3, operators are able to stay focused on their primary work, walking only 5-10 meters to the GT3 to swap carts instead of 380 meters to the compactor. Other benefits include eliminating the need to manage a large inventory of empty trash bins, more consistent workflow and less end-of-day pileups.

In operation, the GT3 realized 100 percent operational uptime and 97.5 percent path completion rate, which contributed to what GENCO calls "outstanding ROI".