Background
Amer SpA, headquartered in Vicenza, Italy, develops and designs AC and DC electric motors, gear motors, steering systems and vehicle drive systems. The company sought a solution to fully automate material handling at its manufacturing facilities in order to maximize efficiency in an ever-escalating production operation. An innovative solution consisting of Modula automated automated vertical warehouses, AGV robots and integrated software enabled Amer to achieve its goals.
Paint Points
As production continued to escalate, Amer wanted a way to move parts from one part of the process to another without human intervention. Doing so has the potential to save time previously spent relying on human resources to pick and replenish goods and improve the accuracy of material handling. It is hoped that the integration of automatic storage and retrieval solutions and automatic navigation (AGV) robots will achieve this demand.
Solution
Amer has previously used Modula automated stereoscopic containers in other production processes. For a factory that desired full automation, Amer chose a Modula ML75 to store semi-finished products. The ML75 is 6.1 meters high, the pallet is 4.1 meters wide, and the load of a single pallet is 750 kilograms. The container receives semi-finished products from one MiR robot and stores them as needed – for hours to days – before another MiR robot removes the goods and transports them to another process in the factory to complete the next step.
As the MiR moves in its direction, the automated automated vertical warehouse moves the required pallet to the picking port as instructed. After the robot arrives, it scans the QR code in front of the shelf for docking, picks up or places materials, and automatically confirms the end of the operation without manual intervention. All operations are coordinated by AMER SW, MiR Shipping Program and Modula’s Warehouse Management System (WMS) software.
“From the very beginning, our goal was to have a fully automated warehousing system, that is to say, completely unmanned and allowing dynamic integration of storage and production transport processes,” says Amer Production Manager Daniele Fontò. “Modula was the best solution, not only because of its storage capacity, but also because of its huge potential for processing orders.”
“We are very satisfied with the project we have developed with Modula,” said Fontò. “This is a quite ‘smart’ process innovation, implemented in the production department, which can effectively utilize the established network, automation and safety systems to perfectly realize production automation.
