AGV means Automated Veichle Guided, with Laser, Inertial or Inductive guidance technology. QS Group supplies turnkey solutions for your logistics needs both within the production cycle and during the incoming, storing and shipping phases. The solution is “made to mesure” following the needs and the requirements peculiar to each single company reality. And this is done both from the technical details and for the installation method, considering that our agv-systems most of the time have to be inserted in already existent and producing plant. The AGV solution integrates with the plant evironment, becoming part of it. The AGV system interface it self with the various logistic and production subsystems, rationalizing and improving their functional integration. The introduction of an AGV based handling system provides you an occasion for rationalising and optimising not only material handling but also entire aspects of production cycle and material management.

WHY AGV ? • Flows rationalization • Costs reduction • Efficiency improvement • Safety improvement • Conrol of Information Data • Material Tracking

The use of self-guided vehicles is certainly the best solution for optimizing internal transport logistics. In various settings, self-guided handling significantly reduces the amount of damage to materials, which normally presents a typical characteristic for manual handling using transpallets. Conversely, the materials flow rationalization and the ensuing analysis of interactions between the subsystems involved in the handling play a fundamental role when it comes to guaranteeing the successful introduction of self-guided vehicles. Safety and reliability requirements must also be taken into account, as they are essential for environments in which the vehicles move in close contact with both staff and manufacturing machinery.

THE SOLUTION The AGVS solution responds to all the above-described requirements, developing the project from the phases of studying and planning the plant, to those of developing the vehicles and the ground stations, and finally the phases of installation on-site and introduction as production support. Our experience in the automation world let us also contribute to the adaptation of the involved subsystems, to intergrate them with the automated vehicles and their management system. The modularity and flexibility of the AGVS solution makes it easily adaptable to various technological and operational settings (different types of machinery or different suppliers) already present in the various areas involved and may be configured for a completely autonomous operation, or else for the integration with production management systems. Another aspect to be taken into account is that of the system interacting with the surrounding environment, and the possibility of adapting the route and functionality of the vehicles to varying factory layouts or operating procedures. The AGVS solutions undoubtedly provide an optimum response to such requirements, and in some cases (teach-in solution) even allow the end-user to update the layout of the routes.

AGVSolutionsMaterial Handling

with Automatic Vehicles

STANDARD VEHICLES Standard vehicles are realized with a control system that automates a serial forklift. The machine is characterised by its rapid and easy installation and by the simple programming of the transport route using Teach-In technology for the self-learning of layouts and reflectors. Differencies between project information and plant reality (not expeted obstacles or different machinaries dimensions) do not generate any problem or delay during installation phase. The guidance system used for this type of vehicles is based on laser technology exclusively. We must specify that this solution sutes only certain cases concerning both the load unit that must handled and the functionalities or flow rates that must be guarantee. Up to 10 vehicle can be managed by the traffic management system. An aspect extremely interesting, for this solution, is releated to the maintenance and the spare parts of this vehicle: for these needs is possible to contact directly a local service or reseller, reducing costs and resolution times.

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Laser Scanner

Operator Panel

Security Devices

Sensors

Motion Control System

CUSTOM VEHICLES Custom Vehicles are designed on the basis of specific application requirements. The most suitable guidance system (laser, inductive or inertial) as well as the most indicated handling devices (motorized conveyors, fixed or telecopic forks, etc), are adopted depending on plant-engineering (indoor or outdoor, temperature and humidity, flooring, door crossing needs, etc.) and vehicle requirements (type and number of load unit that must be moved, single or multiple steering wheel, positioning accuracy etc.). We mount anyway a standard commercial hardware, easily available on the international markets (Siemens, Sick, Ndc-Danaher Motion, Goetting, etc.). The communication with the Traffic Management System is realized on a wireless net with TCP-IP protocol. For Energy Balance Management, different solution are available: Manual Battery Substitution (always possible), Static Automatic Battery Charging (minimum 8 hour of inactivity for each vehicle are required), Dynamic Automatic Battery Charging (possible only if the AGV System saturation level is less then 75%).

INTEGRATION AND POSSIBILE EXTENTION AGV is a specific functional module that can be integrated with : • EXISTING SYSTEMS • QS-MES Solution - for production management • QS-QualityLine – on-line quality control system • QS-Track – product tracking system • WMS – warehouse management system for manual ( wireless devices),

semi-automatic and fully-automatic (AWMS) solution • AWMS – automatic warehouse management system (stackercranes) TRAINING AND SUPPORT Education of your personnel increase security, reliability and performances of our solution. After start-up an accurate training is provided both for users and for supervisor of the involved subsystems. A remote support via modem or VPN is always available.

ARCHITECTURE The AGV Solution has been developped with the maximum modularity in order to be easily inserted in different production realities, also carachterized by mechanical, electrical and data processing high complexity. The solution Architecture can be defined with respect the following aspects: • dimension and complexity of the plant; • load unit (LU) phisical and logical type; • dimensions and characteristics of material flow rates; • load/unload station type and quantity; • type and dimension of eventual warehouses managed by agv vehicles; • requirements of interfacing with other systems involved in material

handling management; In case of significant complexity the WMS (Warehouse Management System) package is used with database or file sharing communication methods. To interface with the different plant-subsystems (origin and destination of the material movement) as well for the stationary part management (battery charger, automatic doors, push button, conveyors, etc.) a PLC Siemens S7 is used. This solution guarantee a complete communication flexibility with all the possible partner and protocols (industrial ethernet, tcp-ip, profibus, modbus, mpi, etc) as well by digital signal exchange.

Client -HMI Server WMS

Traffic Control

Ethernet

PLC

Profibus DP

Existing Systems

Digital I/O

Teleservice

RF

Metal sheet division Metal sheet processing technology Factory: Cerreto D’Esi (AN) Tel +39 0732 67081 metalsheet@qs-group.com

Plastic division Plastic processing technology Factory: Abbiategrasso (MI) Tel +39 02 9401821 plastic@qs-group.com

Logistic division Handling, assembly, automatic warehouse, AGV Factory: Pavia (PV) Tel +39 0382 575601 logistic@qs-group.com

Electronic division Test devices, Industrial software applications Factory: Cerreto D’Esi (AN) Tel +39 0732 67181 electronic@qs-group.com