A leading automotive manufacturer has increased production in its engine block assembly area by using Mitsubishi Electric L series modular PLCs to control its automated guided vehicles (AGV). In addition to the L Series PLCs the newly developed AGV line uses Mitsubishi’s GOT series HMIs,

Advanced Materials Handling

The plant uses an advanced handling system using 130 AGVs to move components between robot stations, special purpose machines and manual workstations. The use of AGVs has helped to optimise the plant configuration and set new standards for productivity.

The AGVs are critical to the smooth running of the engine block assembly line. For an effective and reliable solution, the automotive manufacturer needed AGVs that would be capable of transporting the heavy components, yet be highly compact. They also had to be easy to set-up, install and operate, and had to communicate with the plant’s higher level control system over a wireless LAN.

The MELSEC L Series is Mitsubishi Electric’s newest PLC, designed to meet the needs of OEMs by providing all the performance, functions and capabilities required for today’s demanding automation requirements in a compact, rack-free package.

All of this made the MELSEC L Series PLCs ideal for the control heart of the AGVs. The compact, rack-free package enabled the control panel size to be reduced, whilst having all the required functionality built into the CPU as standard simplified set-up.

Ethernet onboard

With built-in Ethernet, all that was required for the PLC to communicate with the plant’s control system was a wireless LAN adapter. Receiving instructions from external I/O, the PLC calculates all parameters and controls the AGV around the plant, safely and reliably.

Download full story from Mitsubishi Electric UK

Go here for L Series PLCs from Mitsubishi Electric UK

Go here for GOT HMI from Mitsubishi Electric UK