Register for the 2009 Lean Accounting Summit Register for the 2009 TWI Summit Register for the 2009 Lean and Green Summit "Confidence and resourcefulness in how to proceed, not standardized solutions and rules, are developed. These enable supervisors to get good teamwork, to give better service, and to get out more production."

Job Methods Training Manual,1943

10.03.2008

Waste of Transportation

See link to Assembly Mag article: AGV vs. Conveyor.

This is a good, short article, outlining the pros and cons of each system. But, in the context of lean, which this aritcle was presented as...it misses the point. Well, one thing was true about this article, there is "no right answer" when it comes to choosing how to move material in your plant.

But, whether you pick AGV, conveyors, fork trucks or whatever...the main goal is to eliminate moves or minimize to the best of your ability.

Someday, I'm going to invent industrial levitation...

1 comments:

Jim Huntzinger said...

I agree – that is not a specific right or wrong answer. It is situation/need specific. But, most AGV systems that are out there are very expensive – and conveyers can be more inflexible at times. One must look at the specific situation and determine the best solution/counter measure to ensure flow at the best cost. There are simple AGV available, and, in a past life, I (we) actually built one ourselves. We decided to do this based on a simple/inexpensive one we saw being used in Japan and after asking the price of it decided we could build one for even less cost. We were not able to have the opportunity to use fully develop the prototype into production, but we were successful and did build it for significantly less than the “inexpensive” one we saw used in production in Japan.

October 9, 2008 12:58 PM

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