Major Beverage Company Trims Operating Costs and Increases Safety with Automated Trailer Loading Vehicles

Major Beverage Company Trims Operating Costs and Increases Safety with Automated Trailer Loading Vehicles

by Kathleen Elder, Mobile Vehicle Market Manager, SICK, Inc. and
Sarah Carlson, Marketing Manager, Jervis B. Webb Company

At a major beverage company, in upstate, New York, more than 250 products are packaged on pallets during three shifts in a 300,000 square-foot facility. The products are stored and will ultimately be shipped to stores around the country. However, rather than relying on a large number of fork-trucks, more than 90 percent of the heavy lifting and trailer loading is done by battery-powered, automatic trailer loading vehicles. Previously, products were moved via manned fork-trucks from the production line palletizers into the warehouse storage or directly loaded into semi-trailers.  Two hundred trailers are automatically loaded per day, seven days a week. 

Why Switch from Manned Fork-trucks to an Automated Solution?

Like many companies, in order to stay competitive, they were looking for ways to trim operating costs - particularly the costs associated with its continuous trailer loading operations. In addition to labor costs, the bottler was experiencing high costs related to down time, equipment maintenance and damaged product. The bottling company desired an innovative way to reduce operating costs associated with product movement within the warehouse while maintaining trailer load time and accommodating peak loading periods with less effort.

The bottling company turned to the Jervis B. Webb Company, a leading Automatic Guided Vehicle (AGV) developer based in Farmington Hills, Michigan, to design, engineer and manufacture a product that allowed the bottling facility to maintain its current operating schedule while reducing production costs.  “The beverage company knew our capabilities and asked if we could develop a vehicle that could be an automatic warehousing vehicle,” commented Ralph Mills, Jervis B. Webb Company’s account manager. “That means the vehicle could pick up two pallets of product from a palletizer line, place them into storage, stack two more pallets on top, and then be able to go back and pull the product out of storage and put it into a staging bay for a fork-truck operator to be able to load into a trailer,” he continued.

But as development progressed, engineers from the Jervis B. Webb Company figured out a way to automate the process even further. “As we were developing the technology and the customer’s needs came into focus, we thought we could successfully go in and out of trailers with the vehicles,” stated Mills.

After developing and testing a prototype, 36 unmanned automatic trailer loading vehicles, called SmartLoaders®, were installed at the facility. The vehicles move product loads into conventional trailers without guidance wires, lasers or magnets and without modifications to the trailers or loading docks – because the vehicle’s guidance system adapts to the length and skew of each trailer.  SmartLoader delivers loads in multiple configurations, based upon the client’s load patterns, from palletizer output, warehouse, rack or floor staging into conventional over-the-road trailers without manual intervention.

Safety Comes First

According to OSHA, occupational injuries and illnesses related to mobile vehicles cost companies $156 billion per annum in the US.  Safety is the most important concern when using any type of AGV, because they often operate in the same workspace as employees. One solution that many AGV manufacturers have chosen is an S3000 safety laser scanner from Minneapolis-based SICK. This type of laser scanner offers a non-contact method of collision avoidance. It uses time-of-flight technology to scan up to a 190-degree area for obstacles. These laser scanners also provide freely programmable “warning” and “safety” zones. The safety zone can extend from 5 to 23 feet beyond the vehicle, depending on the weight of the vehicle, weight of the load, speed and the stopping distance. If an object or person is in the path of the trailer loading vehicle, the vehicle will slow down or stop, if necessary, until the object or person is clear.

Per ANSI B56.5, section 8.1, emergency control devices must include a sensing device to prevent contact of the object sensed with the vehicle structure in the direction of travel.  A slow-down area should be defined to allow a vehicle to decelerate when an obstacle is sensed.  The stop area must be defined according to the vehicle’s speed, mass, and its brake reaction time to guarantee a safe stop.

In the past, many AGVs were equipped with contact-only safety solutions. These mechanical bumpers would deactivate the AGV upon contact. With a non-contact solution, the AGV stops before any injury to employees, and product or vehicle damage can occur, saving time and money.

Each AGV is equipped with two safety laser scanners from SICK – one on the front and one on the rear that detect obstructions in the vehicle’s path. Separate reflectors are not required and installation is simple because the sender and receiver are in a single housing. “SICK’s S3000 units were chosen for this application due to their price competitiveness and feature-benefit offering,” said Jerry Chilson, Jervis B. Webb Company’s chief AGV engineer.  “The AGV’s onboard processor works together with SICK’s scanner data to guide the vehicle inside the trailer for loading purposes.  No other laser scanner on the market offers this feature,” Chilson continued. 

Jervis B. Webb Company’s choice of the S3000 laser scanners to protect its customer’s application provided safety plus flexibility. The deceleration and stop areas are increased and decreased based on the SmartLoader’s speed, which resulted in increased productivity.  Likewise, the size of the programmed areas varied dependant on the vehicle’s load, which resulted in improved efficiency.  The AGVs were able to maneuver better around corners, tight spaces, and when close to the battery charging station.

Innovative Vehicle Management System

Employees can also feel safer in the warehouse because of all the guidance system features built into the SmartLoader vehicle that monitor where each vehicle is in the facility at any time. “In the vehicle’s computer there is a virtual map of where it needs to travel, and the vehicle system manager directs the vehicle from one point to another, and at intersections controls which vehicle has the right of way,” commented Mills. The trailer loading guidance system utilizes sensors to guide the vehicle through in-trailer loading operations. When maneuvering around the warehouse, the SmartLoader relies on an inertial guidance system and an on-board Vehicle Control Computer to accurately maintain the intended path and perform required tasks. Transponder devices embedded in the floor every 25 to 100 feet are sensed by the AGV to identify its exact location and make sure the vehicle stays on track. Once the vehicle travels over the transponder, it can determine the exact position of the vehicle and make path corrections, if necessary. This measurement also allows the vehicle to readjust itself, if necessary.

A Vehicle System Manager (VSM) is also used to provide real-time control and monitoring of all vehicles within the system. Through the VSM, the SmartLoader vehicle is capable of picking loads from any programmed point in the warehouse and either moving them to a new location or loading them into a trailer. Load configuration can either be pre-programmed into the AGV or broadcast to the vehicle via the VSM on a real-time basis. The load configurations can include single loads from pairs, consolidating single loads into pairs, as well as patterning load configurations to maximize trailer staging area, and dock floor space utilization.

The VSM also interfaces with the existing Warehouse Management System (WMS).  When the safety laser scanner detects an obstruction for an extended period of time, an alarm sounds on the vehicle, and the WMS sends a text message to warehouse personnel, who then clear the vehicle’s path. The VSM can be customized to interface with virtually any WMS.

In addition to loading the trailers, the vehicles stack loads on the floor in the warehouse or deliver loads to the facility’s automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS).  Loads are stored in the AS/RS double deep rack to preserve warehouse space. The warehouse management system tells the VMS what type of beverage to load and which bay to get if from.

A Balanced Warehouse Solution

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, Webb’s SmartLoader trailer loading vehicles keep production at the beverage company warehouse moving safety and smoothly. The vehicles provide a balanced solution to the client's productivity, transportation costs, equipment and labor costs, and product protection needs. Use of the vehicle reduces accidents and ergonomic injuries, while adding an additional level of protection for the product. And the safety laser scanners on board each vehicle provide a reliable safety solution for employees working in the warehouse and to help avoid collisions that could damage the product. Additionally, the vehicle increases the overall efficiency of loading operations by working around the clock.