F129: Integration of New AGV/AMR Technologies in Existing Manufacturing Lines and Processes

The Manufacturing Logistics team needed to implement a new AMR solution into an existing high volume production line with minimal impact to operators and productivity. The Manufacturing Innovation Teams Process Communicator was already in place automatically managing the parts calls to the Logistics system and monitoring activity in the work cells through the controlling PLCs. The gap was the AMR controller had no way to talk to the work cells PLCs to communicate interlock status with the station controller and robots. This talk will cover how they extended the existing tool to encompass address the gap. Using this approach, the team has been able to seamlessly integrate with multiple vendors AMR controllers using their APIs. The support teams in the plants then only need to know this one tool for daily activity instead of having to learn different tools for each AMR solution.