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Benny Forsman, Business Unit Manager, Pick-n-Go North America, Kollmorgen: "Bridging the Divide between Man and Automation: Merging Driven and Unmanned Materials Handling Vehicles into High Performance Fleets."
Topic Info (co-presentation with Sky-Trax, Inc.):
The ability to automatically locate and track driven material handling vehicles with inch-accuracy inside industrial buildings is ushering in a new era for material handling automation. New vehicle location technologies are the key to automating tasks in existing facilities with today’s industrial vehicles in a flexible and economical way. Optical real-time location technology used for driven vehicles can also be applied to automatically guided vehicles; allowing for a combined work environment of driven and guided vehicles working together safely and cooperatively within a traditional warehouse environment.
Discover the possibilities of optical guidance systems as we explore how new real-time location technologies provide remote control guidance for automated vehicles, as well as the ability to monitor, control, and manage manned vehicles in a shared work environment. Sky-Trax and Kollmorgen will discuss implementation considerations to merge the driven and unmanned vehicle operations; and the benefits to be gained with the new mixed vehicle fleets. Learn how this new combination of driven and optically guided vehicle fleets can improve operational performance, efficiency, increase safety through collision prediction, track and direct all resources within the entire fleet of vehicles for optimized operation, and provide near real-time job routing throughout the entire fleet. Case study examples of current implementations will be included.
About Benny Forsman:
Benny Forsman is Business Unit Manager for Kollmorgen Corp, based in Radford, VA. Benny has a background in Mechanical Engineering, and an MBA from Umea Business School and University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Benny has been 10 years with Kollmorgen/Danaher's electric vehicle systems business and currently leads the launch of the Pick-n-Go system solution for automated forklifts in warehouse applications in North America.