Project Schedule 

This is a network flow diagram for the AGV project. Each box represents a task for project completion. The cells in each box (starting from top left) are start period (days), duration, end period, objective, late start, lag time, and late finish period. This corresponds to the Gantt Chart document  document which can be found by clicking the link below. 

Introduction 

With manufacturing technologies quickly advancing, it is important for companies to grow and to stay on par with the market. The AGV's physical capacities will allow for a fully autonomous manufacturing environment where machines make decision for machines to manufacture parts with the goal of optimizing manufacturing lead times and decrees machine downtime. These Cyber Physical Systems allow for the development of new manufacturing methods and more diverse and flexible manufacturing environment.  

Expected Benefits and Business Case

The Threat Opportunity Matrix outlines the short term and long term effects what the sponsor may experience if there is (opportunity) or is not (threat) action taken on the development of the AGV. 

Not working towards the advancement manufacturing  in of the most quickly progressing markets can lead to a loss of business and quickly stagnate progress in manufacturing technologies. The completion and successful implementation of an AGV in a manufacturing environment will help make the push for cyber physical systems propelling sponsors into the next era of manufacturing technologies. 

Define Phase Summary

 Manufacturing high quantity and high variety products is not financially efficient given the current state of manufacturing practices. Creating an automated ground vehicle to enable movement for the DeXter could be used to solve this problem. During the define phase the scope was defined, customer requirements were ascertained, and those customer requirements were used to create a house of quality. The team determined that the payload, number of wheels, and operation time were the three most important AGV qualities required by the customers. These qualities were used to begin to design the AGV. The next steps are to finalize the design of the AGV, order the parts on the bill of materials, and create a simulation in Tecnomatics.  

Process Flow Diagram

The Process Flow Diagram is a more dietaled breakdown of what has to be compleated by a more specific task

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AGV Design and Creation 

Note* due to the time constraints of purchasing parts of and nature of the project, the design of the AGV must take place earlier in the process outside the Design Phase. The completion of the next four phases has content out of the Six Sigma DMADV process order but each section implements tools from each phase. 

Once the team had defined engineering requirements and critical to quality characteristics the team was able to sit down and draft iterations of the AGV in order to best fit what the customer was looking for. The team decided on an AGV with a square build platform to both mount the DeXter to and to Print on as well as a four wheel configuration seen in the graphic below. 

The surface of the AGV is the perfect size to hold one DeXter unit and the AGV's floor footprint is a tessellated shape meaning that there are many different configurations and arrangements where the shapes can fit together in a square grid pattern with out negative space. This shape allows for multiple AGVs to configure themselves in close proximity and also is a very simple geometric shape to allow for spacial configuration in mapping and tracking programs. The design was then created in Solid Works and is easily able to be manufactured using machines accessible at the FAMU-FSU High Performance Materials Institute. The parts list and appropriate purchase order were also filled out during the Define and Measure phase to ensure ample time for manufacturing and testing. 

The AGV Chassis featured above is constructed out of wood and extruded aluminium and was produced as a prototype for a Northrop Grumman representative in junction with a presentation on the progress of the project. 

AGV outfitted with DeXter System