A fork-free environment

摘要

Manual carts, AGCs, AGVs, autonomous mobile robots and overhead handling systems all share a few important characteristics-they improve ergonomic handling and they are not lift trucks. Lift trucks working alongside people in a manufacturing facility can raise safety concerns. One way to enhance safety is to create a "fork-free" environment, which means limiting the use lift trucks in areas where there are a lot of people, areas like the assembly line. A fork-free environment opens the door for automated solutions to transport product to the line. "Transportation is considered a low value-added component-necessary, but low. But if you modernize your transportation, you could design a more efficient work cell. In other words, you have to look beyond the work cell in order to improve it," says Bill Torrens, director of sales and marketing at RMT Robotics.