TR Cutler Profiles Egemin AGV’s in International Food Safety and Quality Network News

April 27, 2011 - PRLog -- Few AGV manufacturers have In-depth knowledge of compliance requirements for food and beverage industries. AGV systems must meet the requirements for intermediate storage of food products. Automated guided vehicles must also take expiration dates of final products into account and organize warehouse shelves accordingly resulting in optimal food conservation at every point in the workflow.

In the current issue of International Food Safety & Quality Network, manufacturing journalist TR Cutler noted, “Food and beverage industry requirements of automated guided vehicles are unique.  AGV’s must be equipped to handle palletized and unit loads of beer, soft drinks, cereals, candy, snack foods, in-process ingredients, packaging materials in manufacturing, cross-docking, warehousing, and trailer loading environments.”

AGV systems in the industry support various storage types for pallets, racks and bins including block stacking, deep lane stacking or warehouse racking.


The ability to modify the construction of an AGV is vital to ensure that it is compliant with stringent hygiene regulations, such as stainless steel frames, usage of fully sealed components. and encapsulated steer drive units to allow complete cleanliness of the AGV’s.

Food & Beverage applications
Automated guided vehicles are implemented in any intermediate stage of food & beverage supply chains from trailer unloading, raw materials receiving. and transport to and from AS/RS to supply to processing lines, handling of finished products and trailer loading.

AGV specific applications in Food and Beverage include:

- Food transport in less operator-friendly environments (cold storage and freezers)
- Transport of fish tubs in salty and oily areas
- Storage of cheese racks and transport to ripening rooms controlled via recipe management software
- Fully automatic handling of beer pallets from automatic warehouse to dock using automatic trailer loading vehicles.

Effective Warehouse Management System software will store each transport the system has performed along with batch ID, time stamp, source and destination location. This allows for tracing the origin of finished food products and whereabouts in every single process step and tracking other food lots resulted from the same original batch.

Warehouse management systems for must deliver efficient and lean material distribution operation systems through unrivaled personnel, inventory, and equipment management. Few warehouses experience 99.9% inventory accuracy and up to 35% productivity improvement from an automation environment.

According to Mark Stevenson, “Warehouse Management Systems must link the logistic environment and the equipment available in the warehouse and consists of two main modules.”  Stevenson is Vice President for Egemin Automation, Inc., a global provider of Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems, Material Handling and Automation solutions.  For the past twenty years, Stevenson has worked with many of the world's largest corporations on the design and implementation of automatic guided vehicle systems, including two of the first automatic trailer loading system in the United States, and he holds a patent as a co-inventor of ATL technology.  Stevenson is recognized as one of the foremost authorities and subject matter experts on the design and application of automated trailer loading systems and warehousing automation with automatic guided vehicles.  “Warehouse Management Systems must be specifically designed to work with all forms of automation, as well as forklift truck fleets,” noted Stevenson.

Companies in the food, beverage, plastics, consumer goods and big box retail distribution markets purchase Egemin Hybrid Automated Guided Vehicles for flexibility, familiarity, reliability, and affordability.  Combined with Egemin’s Warehouse Management System (E’wms), organizations realize better than expected returns on investment.

Egemin Automation Inc. (http://www.egeminusa.com) is the leading manufacturer of AGVs and Warehouse Management Systems since 1976. Egemin is a worldwide organization operating on six continents. Egemin’s Center for AGV Excellence is located in Holland, Michigan, where it employs all disciplines as the AGV industry leader. All AGV technologies including design, software, and support, are developed and owned by Egemin. Over 5,000 AGVs have been manufactured and installed; many are being used by Fortune 500 companies.


Egemin Automation
www.egeminusa.com
Dave Noble
Director of Marketing and Communications
PR@egeminusa.com
1-616-393-0101