Ford automation warehouse systems

Good morning! Today I want to talk you about the automation systems you can find in Ford motor company, or at least, the two more interesting systems, in my opinion, while managing a big storage as Ford in Almussafes, Valencia.

All my family has been working at Ford for more than 40 years, so I am a kind of a Ford child, so that’s the reason why I’m always driving Ford cars, for those of you who have seen my car, or past cars.

When I was 16 I was offered the opportunity to do an internship at Ford during the summer break, from June to the beginning of August. It wasn’t the type of internship you do during your university studies, but a kind of internship to understand how the company of our parents was working. It was 2009, I was young and I didn’t know much about life( as now), so I was amazed by the robots and all the technology of Ford but something that surprised me the most was the warehouse where they used to have the smaller parts (like screws, nuts…). They had it automatized as in this video, but in the biggest place you can imagine and with more than 8 different robots that were supplying different desk that then were trasportedthis parts to the different plants where the assembly was made.

I’ve been trying to look for their system now, but there isn’t much information about it, nevertheless, I have found an interesting system that is working in the engines plant to manage the warehouse and make the inventory of the different engine parts.

Here you can see how all the work is developed by robots that, completely alone, manage the storage:

 

As always, let me know if you want to share something or if you liked it.

Old warehouses VS new warehouses

You can read about the same day recovery in amazon in other post, but we want show the importance of innovation to increase the efficiency and effectiveness, for this we are going to compare the logistics center in San Fernando de Henares (Madrid) with the logistics center in Tracy, California.  You can see the process in Madrid and the process in Tracy.

This new technology makes us win: more space capacity, less time to prepare the order (times are down 90minutes to 15minutes), less tired workers that previously they  had to work long distances (the stock amazon has the dimension of 59 fields football).
Similarities: they continue using an ordered chaos and not classify objects by class.

Technology used in both stores: first quality control (photograph, measure and weigh), product identification barcode and very important for my machine labeled (if labeling performs poorly, the package is not sent and the company loses money and image. Many small businesses lose money to make the wrong type labeling for not having this technology).

Future technology: Sending by Drones, FAA, the federal agency responsible for regulating the airspace of the US, Amazon has given permission to use autonomous flying vehicles, although with many restrictions and an experimental license. Amazon hopes to deliver packages in less than 30 minutes, even in rural or difficult to access.

 

Alejandro Rodriguez Barea