The transport of items of interest between separated locations may be a required task in a number of commercial, industrial or other settings. For example, the need to transport parts or other required items between various areas of a manufacturing facility is well understood.
A particularly illustrative but non-limiting example of such a setting is an automobile manufacturing plant, where a multitude of different parts are required to assemble a complete vehicle. Generally, a manufacturing plant is divided into a number of different departments where one or more processes involving one or more different parts or subassemblies of a vehicle being assembled are performed. As would be well understood by one of skill in the art, such a manufacturing operation will normally require that vehicle parts or subassemblies be transported from one location to another within a given department, as well as between a location in one department and a location in another department. Whether this part or subassembly transport is of an inter-department or intra-department nature, the involved parts and/or subassemblies are typically located on/in rolling containers, racks or other temporary storage and transport devices (generally referred to collectively hereafter as “carts”).
A number of automated devices and systems have been developed and employed for transporting items of interest across the vast area often occupied by many manufacturing facilities. For example, in automobile manufacturing plants, various overhead and/or in-floor conveyor systems may transport individual components, subassemblies, or entire vehicles through a plurality of manufacturing and assembly operations. In such facilities, forklifts, tow motors and automated guided vehicles (AGV's) may also be employed for component and/or subassembly transport—frequently carrying or towing the components and/or subassemblies on specially designed carts.
While long-distance transport of such items of interest is often well thought out and executed, the movement or transport of parts or subassemblies within a more confined area, such as within a predefined area of a given department, is not always as well-automated. Rather, short distance movement of such items is often wholly lacking in automation—relying instead on physical manpower to transport the items from one location to another.
While such a transport method may not be problematic in many situations, one skilled in the art would readily understand that such is not always the case. For example, a cart provided for temporarily holding items of interest and facilitating the transport thereof may be designed to hold a large number of said items. Alternatively, a provided cart may hold only a few items of interest, but the items of interest may be of considerable weight and/or size. Still yet, the items of interest may be large and/or heavy and an associated cart may be designed to hold a significant number of such items, thereby compounding the problem. Therefore, depending on the physical characteristics of the particular item(s) of interest being transported and the design of the carts provided to transport said items, it can be easily understood that manual movement of such carts when loaded (and even when empty) may be difficult. This difficulty may result from the weight of a loaded (or empty) cart, and/or the overall space occupied by a loaded (or empty) cart.
As one non-limiting example, again consider an automobile manufacturing operation and, more particularly a bumper fascia manufacturing operation. It is well known that bumper fascias can be of considerable size—generally at least as long as the width of an automobile and frequently 12-24 inches in height. Thus, in addition to weighing from several to tens of pounds, such bumper fascias are fairly large and difficult to maneuver. Consequently, carts provided to temporarily store and transport bumper fascias are also typically large. For example, such carts are frequently designed to hold and transport 12 or more bumper fascias at a time.
The difficulties with manually moving such a cart from one location to another, even over relatively short distances, should be obvious (particularly when loaded). In addition to the force required to set and maintain a large cart in motion, there is also the difficulty of accurately maneuvering such a cart between and around other carts and the various equipment and workers commonly scattered about the transport area. These difficulties are compounded when it is also considered that such a manufacturing operation may commonly employ a large number of carts, which must be frequently moved. For example, a bumper fascia manufacturing operation may use in excess of 100 carts and may produce more than 1,000 fascias per day.
Therefore, it should also be obvious that it would be advantageous to employ a system and method wherein at least a portion of such a transport function is automated. A cart, system and method of the present invention provides for such automation.