“Nice to meet you!” – When two forklifts face off in a narrow aisle

SICK safety laser scanners combine know-how and experience with maximum performance. With the original PLS from SICK, safety laser scanners for stationary and mobile machine protection have enjoyed unimaginable success for over 20 years With the new safety laser scanner S3000 Anti Collision, SICK makes use of its own scanning range record of 7 meters for a field where safety is key but it doesn't stop there – it is actually capable of covering a much greater scanning range of up to 15 meters.

S3000 Anti Collision: Operate more than one vehicle in a narrow aisle for the very first time

In mobile applications, the S3000 Anti Collision offers by far the largest range for a field where safety is key: 15 meters.
A protective field is used to safely detect oncoming forklifts in narrow-aisle applications and reduce their speed before a collision occurs. The S3000 Anti Collision can be relied upon to detect a reference target on the oncoming vehicle at a distance of up to 15 meters away. This means that – for the very first time – it is possible to operate two forklifts at high speed in a single aisle, offering maximum results with a high level of system throughput. Dynamic field switching is a further function that facilitates a high degree of throughput. At the same time, the S3000 Anti Collision monitors a protective field of up 7 meters to detect human presence.

No compromise on safety

As a result of spatial restrictions in the aisles, shelving systems that are accessed using industrial trucks do not always conform to a minimum distance of 0.50 meters between the shelving units and the vehicle or load to be transported. Passages of this size between shelving systems are referred to as narrow aisles.

It is not possible for operators of industrial trucks in narrow aisles to avoid oncoming vehicles. In order to ensure personal safety, DIN 15185-2 requires operators to take technical and organizational action.

The “reliable collision protection field” is an auxiliary function of safety laser scanners intended to prevent industrial trucks from colliding in narrow aisles. Unlike conventional safety functions that offer personal protection depending on whether a human presence is directly detected, this function detects a vehicle in the surrounding area and so, by avoiding collisions between two vehicles, indirectly prevents harm from coming to individuals.
The high relative speed of two vehicles that are travelling toward each other makes it necessary for the collision protection field to have a large scanning range. In this case, a protective field with a scanning range of 7 meters is no longer good enough.

From a user perspective, the objective is to increase throughput as a result of the ability to operate two forklifts in a narrow aisle at high speed.

Flexibility in Logistics

Customers today expect to have the ultimate freedom of choice and ever increasing personalization of their products. The change in customer requirements puts new demands on the entire supply chain. Although additional personalization requires extra effort in terms of production and logistics, productivity and efficiency are not expected to suffer; which may sound like a contradiction in terms.

In addition, customers increasingly expect a high degree of transparency in business processes, to give them maximum flexibility in terms of demand and freedom to act. Supply chains now face the same challenges both within and between the relevant factories, because logistics are everywhere, whether inside a production site or en route to the next one.

Intelligent networking of factories, as foreseen by 'Industry 4.0', solves both problems by creating a high degree of transparency and flexibility through new concepts of automation. There are many different dimensions within the supply chain through which logistics can exert influence. There are five challenges that directly affect flexibility in all areas of logistics: 

Communication – track and trace – flexible automation – quality control – safety

Safety: Autonomous machines require new safety concepts that are optimized to more flexible production methods. These include the protection of every process step along a production line to deal with man/machine interactions, which are now significantly less susceptible to planning. In all of these approaches and solutions, of course, the safety of people is a priority. However, the safety aspect must also cover an adaptive approach to the production environment, such that the safety solutions themselves are flexible and responsive. This means that complex and highly automated production lines do not need to be shut down completely just because safety cannot be guaranteed at an individual point in the process.