Jungheinrich will be publicly premiering this module at LogiMAT in February 2011. Moreover, visitors to CeMAT, which runs from 2 to 6 May 2011 in Hannover, Germany, can experience the Jungheinrich Truck Guidance System live in simulated operation.
 
By implementing intelligent strategies, the Jungheinrich Truck Guidance System avoids unnecessary empty truck times in the warehouse. The Truck Guidance System sends the right truck to the nearest job. “This innovation not only adds transparency and efficiency to a logistics system,” says Dr Alexander Ulbrich, WMS Product Manager at Jungheinrich, “but also conserves resources and ultimately reduces pressure on the environment.”

The Truck Guidance System collects and processes all internal transport orders. These are optimised using a predefined set of principles and rules, then issued to the appropriate industrial trucks. Additionally, the system manages all functions of all forklifts in the warehouse fleet. “This ensures that the right truck is always selected for the pending transport job,” adds Ulbrich.

Orders are issued following a variety of optimisation criteria. These include, for instance, the double run and avoidance of empty trips criteria. The relevant algorithms identify and set up double runs — two-way transport. These transport jobs are then assigned to the appropriate forklifts. On the other hand, the priority criterion means urgent orders are given precedence. The system automatically assigns a higher priority to transport orders which have not been completed within a certain time frame.

Another feature embedded in the Jungheinrich Truck Guidance System is the payload, mast height and lift height monitoring function. For heterogeneous forklift truck fleets, this feature ensures that the maximum permissible payload and/or the respective mast and lift heights of each individual truck operating in the fleet are not exceeded. The Resource Management module integrated in the Jungheinrich WMS provides a continuous overview of the actual capacity utilisation and redundancy of the truck fleet, allowing for the early identification of capacity bottlenecks and the implementation of suitable countermeasures.

Balancing the capacity utilisation of an entire forklift fleet leads to significant time and distance savings for the operator. “Queues in front of racking aisles are now a thing of the past,” concludes Ulbrich, adding that increased material flow efficiencies also translated into an optimisation of existing truck fleets.

Jungheinrich ranks among the world’s leading companies in the material handling equipment, warehousing and material flow engineering sectors. The company is a service provider with manufacturing operations as well as an intralogistics solution provider, which offers its customers a comprehensive range of forklift trucks, shelving systems, services and consulting. Jungheinrich shares are traded on all German stock exchanges.