Advantages of AGVs

Advantages of AGVs

1. Reduce labor costs

AGV reduces labor costs in your operations in many aspects: by replacing human workers with an AGV, a company pays a fee for the initial investment in equipment vs ongoing costs, which will have a new employee.

2. Increase safety

AGV takes safety into consideration when programming, so it is packed with cameras, lasers, and other sensors to make it safe to operate around people and buildings. In contrast, manually operated equipment, such as forklifts, do not have so many built-in safety mechanisms and ultimately rely on manual input, which may be affected in many ways. Although human operators may always be distracted or fatigued and cause accidents, these do not need to be considered when using AGV.

In addition, AGV can be operated under conditions that humans cannot operate optimally, such as extremely hot or cold or surrounding hazardous materials.

All these improved safety, reduced costs, reduced operation downtime, and ultimately improved the profitability of many operations.

3. Improve accuracy and productivity

Simply put: human beings make mistakes. By replacing human factors with AGV, you eliminate the possibility of some inaccurate workflows, ultimately reducing waste and increasing output, making your operations more efficient and accurate.

4. Modularity

As operations expand, it is easy to add additional AGVs (sometimes called "modular system elements"). This can avoid a high initial investment, because you don't have to buy 20 or 30 AGVs at a time, you can start with one or two AGVs, then slowly transition, and finally, expand your fleet to fully automated or basically automated operations.

Disadvantages of AGVs

1. Potentially high initial investment

Ultimately, AGV improves the bottom line of operations by reducing labor costs and increasing productivity, but this comes at a price: the initial investment. Buying an AGV, in the short term, maybe more expensive than hiring personnel or using other equipment such as forklifts. It is usually in the long term that savings can be fully realized. This initial investment may burden small businesses that may not be able to obtain capital.

Maintenance costs. Like any equipment, AGV requires routine maintenance and occasional repairs. Although the AGV will not be directly operated by the staff, due to the training of the staff and the implementation of the AGV, there will inevitably be a certain amount of operational downtime. This is not necessarily a "disadvantage" in itself, but it should also take into account the occasional ongoing expenses.

2. Maintenance costs

Like any equipment, AGV requires routine maintenance and occasional repairs. Although the AGV will not be directly operated by the staff, due to the training of the staff and the implementation of the AGV, there will inevitably be a certain amount of operational downtime. This is not necessarily a "disadvantage" in itself, but it should also take into account the occasional ongoing expenses.

3. Not suitable for non-repetitive tasks

AGV is most meaningful in operations that deal with repetitive tasks because this is what they are programmed to do. If your work is not repetitive, then through employees operating other equipment (such as forklifts), they may do it faster and more efficiently.

4. Reduced operational flexibility

One of the benefits of having manpower is that sometimes operations require flexibility, such as the ability to jump between tasks.

AGV works in accordance with preset systems and processes, which makes rapid changes difficult. A business model that tends to respond to trends or is otherwise agile may not be the best fit for AGV.

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