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摘要

Automatic guided vehicles, or AGVs, have been a staple of materials handling in a manufacturing environment for decades. It's not uncommon to find a fleet of 20 or more vehicles delivering product to the assembly line in a large automotive plant. But, AGVs in a distribution center? Not so much. In DCs, they have largely been relegated to moving product from the plant to an adjoining DC. That may be about to change, if the 420,000-square-foot distribution center opened by Del Monte Foods in Topeka, Kan., last October is any indication. There, Del Monte has put to work a fleet of 39 laser-guided AGVs (Elettric80, us.elettric80.com). Four conveyor-topped vehicles ferry loads of pet products from an adjacent manufacturing plant to a transfer conveyor in the distribution center. There, the loads are automatically placed on pallets and staged for putaway in the DC. Each vehicle can carry four loads at a time.