STORAGE, HANDLING & DISTRIBUTION
ALWAYS AN EDGE AHEAD
DAIFUKU
Daifuku to construct highly resilient AS/RS
Daifuku, the Japanese materials handling
specialist who were announced recently
as the World’s largest automated materials
handling company in 2020 (Source:
Modern Materials Handling), have signed a
contract with a Tier 1 automotive supplier to
construct a highly resilient AS/RS.
The AS/RS will act as a buffer between
the Tier 1 supplier’s manufacturing cell and
the automotive manufacturer’s assembly
line. Parts will be stored in the AS/RS until
demanded by the production schedule
and must be delivered to a trailer loading
system in strict build sequence order.
Every part is treated as a unique SKU
(Stock Keeping Unit) and no substitution
is possible. Therefore, it is of paramount
importance to ensure that any part can
be accessed by the automated storage
system when called for by the production
schedule.
To make sure this demand can always be
achieved, Daifuku has designed a system
that features a spare crane that can be
deployed into any of the storage aisles at
short notice in the event of a malfunction of
any of the “regular” cranes.
The spare crane has its own parking bay
to the side of the racking and in the event
of a failure that cannot be resolved within
a very short period of time, the faulty crane
is taken out of the aisle using a transfer car
and put into a separate maintenance area
whilst the spare crane is transferred into
the aisle to carry on with the production
schedule whilst the defective machine is
repaired.
Whilst the MTBF (Mean Time Between
Failures) for automated stacker cranes is
generally quite long, and the MTTR (Mean
Time to Repair) is normally quite short, the
risk of stopping the client’s assembly line
was considered too great and hence this
extra resilience is required.
An added benefit of this solution is a
reduction in the spare parts holding
on site, as the spare crane provides
an immediate availability of parts and
therefore reduces what can otherwise be a
significant investment in critical spare parts.
The AS/RS will be installed at the Tier 1
supplier’s UK manufacturing facility during
2020 and will be ready for SOP (Start of
Production) of the new model early in
2021.
For further information please contact Robert Wood at Daifuku on 01908 288790 or at [email protected]
74 PECM Issue 45