CASE STUDY
Capabilities Demonstrated
The Client:
Sun Chemical, a global chemical manufacturer
- ERP to Plant Floor integration
- Warehouse process redesign
- Material flow automation
- Real-time monitoring & visibility
- Custom device & system interfaces
- Label printing & barcode integration
The Starting Point
Pallets Built by Hand and Picks on Paper
Across three warehouses, material moved on manual effort: pallets built by hand in the ERP system, forktruck putaway, paper pick packets printed and highlighted by a coordinator, transfer orders confirmed after the fact.
Sun Chemical saw what AGVs could do, but an AGV is only as smart as the system dispatching it. Making automation real meant connecting warehouse management to the vehicles on the floor, in every workflow from the receiving dock to the shipping conveyor.
The Approach
Three Warehouses with a Single Foundation
The solution enabled remote factory acceptance testing (FAT) of the batch automation system that SkyIO had developed for the customer.
- Receiving | Operators scan materials at receiving, where the system builds the pallet and prints a label. The conveyor PLC scans the label, creates a transfer order, and an AGV puts the pallet away in the next open bin.
- Production Staging | Planners schedule next-day material moves in advance. Urgent requests skip the schedule and dispatch an AGV immediately. The system tracks bin levels continuously and triggers replenishment before anything runs short.
- Product Queue | The system continuously monitors reactor bin levels and triggers replenishment before materials run short. Using scheduled batch start times and active process orders, AGVs automatically retrieve and deliver required raw materials to dedicated reactors.
- Finished Goods | The coordinator selects a delivery, picks pallets from a first-in-first-out list, and one click dispatches the AGVs and creates the transfer orders. No paper packet required.
The Success
One Workflow, Receiving to Shipping
Today, material flows from receiving to putaway, staging, and shipping on a single integrated workflow. Barcode scanning replaced manual entry. Transfer orders are created, dispatched, and confirmed automatically, with safeguards filtering blocked bins and materials
before an AGV ever moves. Coordinators watch every delivery and transfer order live, each with its assigned AGV and execution status.
Technologies
- Ignition
- Sepasoft
- SAP Warehouse Management
- Kepware
- BarTender
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Autonomous guided vehicles
- Automated conveyors
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