Managing Today’s ‘Just In Case’ Supply Chain With Automated Guided Vehicles

As distribution centers raced to meet soaring demand from retail stores this past holiday season, some of their hardest workers followed an unusual daily schedule. They didn’t start their day with a cup of coffee or a bowl of cereal. They didn’t even clock in at the warehouse. They didn’t have to – they’d spent the night there. Because they’re machines.

Automated guided vehicles, or AGVs, tirelessly move goods through production processes, transport ordered products to trailer-loading areas for distribution and load and unload pallets, among other tasks. These vehicles – which include everything from mobile conveyor belts to futuristic forklifts to trash-haulers that look like something out of “Star Wars" – are used increasingly across industries, such as automotive, food, healthcare and manufacturing. Many of today’s most efficient distributors and manufacturers employ AGVs for dependable, accurate lifting, sorting and moving – and continually find new tasks for them.

“One advantage of AGVs is that you take away the variance and volatility in performance,” says Kai Beckhaus, President of MCJ Supply Chain Solutions, a subsidiary of Jungheinrich and Mitsubishi Logisnext Americas, which is part of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) group. “They are all A-plus performers.”

Helping overcome supply chain challenges

Maintaining efficiency at warehouses and factories has become especially important given the seemingly endless series of supply chain problems the world has faced over the past few years. The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and severe natural disasters like China’s record-breaking 2022 drought have disrupted the flow of materials and goods at the heart of the global economy. These challenges show no signs of abating anytime soon, with the U.S. facing a serious labor shortage and China recovering slowly from a major COVID outbreak that’s hampering the completion of manufacturing orders.

“You’ve got to have a system that’s flexible enough to absorb variability over days, weeks and months.”

MHI’s portfolio of automated guided vehicles, from stackers and tuggers to reach trucks and heavy-load trucks, help companies keep commerce flowing as smoothly as possible in the face of these complications. AGVs move quickly, safely and accurately along programmed routes, powered by rechargeable batteries and able to navigate tight spaces using guidance technologies including floor-surface mounted magnetic tape, lasers and optical sensors. Fleet control software enables companies to coordinate anywhere between a few to several dozen vehicles, maximizing efficiency and minimizing traffic congestion.

“The fleet controller manages the movement of all the AGVs in a customer’s facility and optimizes those movements throughout the day,” says Brian Markison, Senior Director of AGV sales at Mitsubishi Logisnext Americas. It’s an elaborately choreographed dance that looks different from site to site depending on what needs to get done and when.

Sometimes this dance looks pretty much the same, hour after hour, day after day, within a given space — load, transport, unload, repeat. Throw in an occasional charging break, and that’s how many AGVs spend their lives. They’re suited to the tedium, performing repetitive tasks with unflagging zeal that can be hard for human workers to muster, especially in warehouses and factories designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The more predictable the day, the better – it makes for a highly efficient operation.

But in today’s environment of near-constant supply-chain disruption, AGVs often have to adapt to inconsistent workflows and shifting needs. “You’ve got to have a system that’s flexible enough to absorb variability over days, weeks and months,” Markison says. “That’s shifted a lot of warehouses from a ‘just in time’ mentality to a ‘just in case’ mentality.”

An expanding market

The market for automated guided vehicles is growing rapidly, and they are becoming more affordable, more reliable and easier to install. Their modular design makes them adaptable to a wide variety of industries and applications, and their efficient operation makes them less prone to wear and tear than manually operated machines.

AGVs also fit neatly into the “electrify everything” framework increasingly espoused by business and corporate America. “If you buy the electricity from renewable energies, our AGV fleets can be operated fully carbon neutral,” Beckhaus says.

The rise of AGVs has raised understandable concerns about the impact on workers. As dependable and efficient as the vehicles are, they aren’t likely to put humans out of jobs any time soon. It’s true that AGVs relieve the need for a human to drive a forklift 24 hours a day, but as many industrial suppliers have discovered, the number of humans willing and able to drive forklifts has become increasingly scarce.

Automated guided vehicle fleets also are creating new jobs, from sales associates for suppliers to service technicians with expertise in both AGV software and hardware.

More important, every dance needs a choreographer. If an unexpected task suddenly presents itself — the delivery of long-awaited materials, for example — human operators are needed to change the dancers and the steps. Using a graphical interface, they can manually create a new order reprioritizing the fleet, prompting some AGVs to change their tasks while others complete any ongoing work.

AGV fleets also are creating new jobs, from sales associates for suppliers to service technicians with expertise in both AGV software and hardware. And it’s humans, of course, who must determine how many AGVs are required in a given facility, which tasks to prioritize and when the scheduled flow should be interrupted to accommodate shifting needs.

These employees will continue to follow traditional daily work routines, taking short breaks throughout the day and longer breaks for meals. At the end of their shifts, they’ll go home, where they’ll spend time with their families, maybe watch a little TV or read a book, and go to sleep.

As they dream, their computerized coworkers will keep gliding along the warehouse floor — loading, transporting, unloading — in an unending ballet that’s helping to keep the wheels of global commerce turning.

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