Signify

Eliminating foot traffic with accessible & user-friendly automation.

Challenge

Signify was looking at eliminating much of the foot traffic that they had on their manufacturing floor. Some of this included having operators leaving the line to bring a single part to the final assembly line or taking items from the external warehouse into the internal warehouse. The overall challenge was just removing as much of the single part transportation as much as possible.

Achievement

The chosen solution to overcome this challenge was a combination of FlexQube carts and an AGV. These (if needed) could be used in combination with each other to tow materials back and forth. One of the major causes of unneeded foot traffic on the shop floor was the extraction of rubbish & recycling by adding recycling & rubbish units to the AGV.

Solution

Signify began by leasing 2 AGVs (Q-100-4414), 2 flatbed tugger carts (Q-100-0112) & 2 tugger shelf carts (Q-100-4674). The AGVs provided Signify with an automated solution that could help eliminate the foot traffic. While the standard carts ensured that they could transport larger volumes of carts. A side benefit of solving the initial challenge was to give the time back that is taken up by this movement and transportation to the employees.

“So on average, we are looking at about a 10-15 minute savings for each line, having 10 lines out there that can mean up to 150 mins or 2.5 hours. Over the course of a week when you begin adding all of that up, you start to see how an operator’s expertise isn’t being leveraged how it should be.”

– Sturgis Kyle, Engineering Manager Siginify in Pennsylvania, USA

Giving employees their time back

One of the challenges that needed to be addressed was ensuring that employees were given more time to complete their tasks on the manufacturing floor, essentially giving time back to the employees. The key theme to be able to fulfill this was to eliminate single part transportation. Using the AGV to automate transportation through the facility improved the need for the operators to move throughout the facility. On average 10-15 minutes per line was saved per day using the AGV. Multiply this by 10 lines and the days per week and this turns into a considerable amount of time given back to the employees.

Launched the AGV quickly & easily

One added benefit that wasn’t anticipated by using the AGV was how quickly & easily it went from unboxing to in use. Signify Manufacturing Engineer Michael Levengood states “What surprised me most about the AGV was its ease of use. Even the unboxing process to be able to set it up that quickly and get it working, laying out the tape, to it slowing down on different colors. It’s just been a breeze to use, from programming to actually operating it.” Having the AGV programmed through an android operating system provided a fast onboarding process for Signify and meant that their operators on the shop floor were already familiar with the software.