Sinopec’s first robot utilizing AGV technology has been put into use
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After nearly 3 months of trial operation, Sinopec’s first intelligent material warehouse equipped with AGV technology was recently put into use at Shanghai Petrochemical. This smart warehouse has enabled a shift in the warehousing model from \"people searching for goods\" to \"goods finding people\", taking another solid step toward achieving the goal of a green and intelligent supply chain for materials. This smart warehouse was put into trial operation on July 10 this year. It covers an area of 3,000 square meters and has 6,600 storage locations. A total of 14 robots are used for intelligent operations, and currently more than 1,700 items are stored there. AGV is the abbreviation for Automated Guided Vehicle. The handling robots used by Shanghai Petrochemical can, under the control of the management system and guided by QR codes on the floor, enable automatic picking and transportation in both the inbound and outbound processes.
It is said that when the warehouse is full, according to the original staffing arrangement, a team of 7 to 8 people is required; with the current approach, however, only 4 people are needed to handle all incoming and outgoing shipments. While saving labor, the introduction of robotic management systems has also brought about a fundamental change in the picking methods used in traditional manual warehouses. “The traditional warehousing operation model is ’people searching for goods’, which involves manually locating items in the warehouse based on their location information. Now it’s ‘goods finding people’, especially when picking large quantities of items; in other words, all the robots are performing picking tasks, which can **improve our overall efficiency in taking items off the shelves and delivering them. ”
In 2019, Sinopec Shanghai launched an intelligent material management system, initially achieving intelligent management of materials from procurement to use. With the operation of Shanghai Petrochemical’s new intelligent material warehouse, the company’s material supply chain has achieved intelligent management across the entire process, becoming the first application scenario to take shape in the smart factory under construction at Shanghai Petrochemical.
An Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) is a type of transport vehicle equipped with automatic guidance systems such as electromagnetic or optical devices, enabling it to move along predetermined paths. It features safety mechanisms as well as various functions for transporting goods. In industrial applications, it is a driverless vehicle that relies on rechargeable batteries as its power source. Generally, its path and behavior can be controlled via a computer, or an electromagnetic path-following system can be used to determine its route; this electromagnetic track is attached to the floor, and the autonomous mobile vehicle moves and operates according to the signals provided by the track.