Magazine Bindery Logistics

Integrated Material Handling System including ASRS, AGV, Palletizers, and conveyor for a bindery operation

The bindery expansion project included a 5 aisle ASRS serviced by an AGV system.  Fork truck style AGV’s would retrieve pallets from the ASRS and deliver pallets to the bindery operations on either side of the ASRS.  Pallets arriving at the bindery were placed on the floor along side the binders.   

Assembled catalogs were labeled by zip code and strapped.  Bundles were conveyed to the bundle palletizers and assembled into pallet loads.  Full pallet loads were discharged to a common outbound conveyor were they were to be picked up by the AGVs.  Stacks of empty pallets were brought to the each palletizer by the AGVs.   

The original plan above exceeded the project justification by $3,000,000.00 so the modifications to the plan needed to be made to reduce costs without sacrificing throughput and reliability. 

Alternative Arrangement 

Improved logistical material flow

Alternative Plan

The following modifications were presented as an alternative to the original plan. This plan represented a $3,300,000.00 reduction in total project costs.   

1. Reduce the number of fork truck AGV’s to 6, (versus 25) 3 per side, and utilize faster conventional dual load AGV’s.  This reduced the required number by more than half while improving throughput capacity due to the ability to carry 2 pallets at once. The fork truck AGVs were utilized only to select incoming pallets and place them on the floor in the bindery area were needed.  

2. Eliminate excessive AGV path and travel time to service the bindery and     palletizers.  

3. Locate the palletizers at the end of each production line, thereby eliminating much of the conveyor required to keep all of the palletizers in one location.  

4. Cost Avoidance: Please Note 

While not included in the above “hard dollar” cost savings, a substantial reduction was anticipated in maintenance of the conveyor system as well as the AGVs themselves.