It´ll be a tool for warehouse design, material flow simulation and virtual comissioning.
We´ve been working on that for like 15 months mostly in our spare time.
MAGELLAN offers specificators for different rack systems, conveyor elements, resources like forklifts, reach trucks and you can customize your warehouse and its strategies just like in SAP EWM.
By now you can try different slotting strategies, calculate cycle times, and many more.
By mid of this year we plan on another huge epic which is virtual commissioning.
All conveyor elements (and automated warehouse things) will be fully configurable and we
will connect MAGELLAN to SAP EWM MFS (material flow system). Therefore we will offer functionalities to customize PLC behaviour in MAGELLAN. Telegram communication via TCP / IP sockets.
What else is already integrated? GamePad support, Oculus Rift Support,
project and scenario manager, user management, RBAC and a lot of more.
Frontend: BJS and a lot of plain JS instead of cumbersome frameworks.
Backend: Java, Spring Boot
Database: MS SQL Server
My GPU for testing and dev.: GTX 1070 ti (vertices are piling up in large scenarios)
Perhaps… display current config ONLY? Or full drag’n’drop WYSIWYG node-editor type-of thing?
Probably not easy to do in VR… likely a 2d thing. If so, are you going to “fortify” BJS GUI to accomplish it? Or HTML? Or… what? Java Swing? Third-party flow-charting lib? Thoughts? (thx)
yes and no. Well, currently not, but for “virtual commissioning” we are still looking for a handy solution like “ladder logic” in JS. We need something to implement logic-editor-functionality to link drives and sensors with basic logic for our conveyor elements - unfortunately nothing good out-of-the-box, though.
We´re playing around with various libs. Most likely we´re going to develop something by ourselves.
Swing is out-of-scope because it´s deprecated and i don´t like FX either.
–> MVC pattern, though
By now. we actually don´t need something like 2d-flow-charts. We´ve a lot of screens showing what a planner already did what he still has to do. In most cases, work-flows are not straight-forward, but we support the user by showing alerts if sth. (configuration, etc.) is missing.
Thx T! Ok, can I ask more weird questions? You don’t have to answer… if you don’t want-to, or if I hit a trade secret.
I think the hardware/software that “runs” a semi-automated warehouse/factory… is called “Process Control”, yes? It probably includes safety/fault shutdown sensors and logic, and careful timing sequences… essentially… event sequencing, yes? There is probably some “industry standard” systems established for that.
Are the current process-control systems in-use… mostly custom devved-in-house systems? Or is someone making off-the-shelf process control systems? I’m curious about how “smoothly” you will integrate YOUR system… with already-in-use proc-ctrl systems. Do you try to make your simulated system… “feel like” the process control software that they will use IF they actually open a real warehouse? (familiarity)
Your racks/shelves/robots… are they modeled-after already-existing industry-standard racks, etc? Shelf lookup methods (package-finding) and package grappling devices (clampers) used in your sim… actually have real life similar versions which work in similar real-life ways? Folks can “make the trip” from sim-warehouse to real warehouse… fairly smoothly? Your software can spit out conveyor and shelving company names and model numbers… that look and act like your sim-system does?
I’m not very educated about this stuff… sorry. Is your group going to get involved in REAL process control, too? Or are you guys going to stay on the simulation side only?
Actually, our product is in between higher-level systems like ERPs or Warehouse Management Systems and electronic control systems like PLCs.
We don´t focus on simulation but emulation, which means our product acts like a digital twin of a real system in cases the real system is not available for testing because it´s either needed for productive operation or it is still in its building-up phase.
We it comes to setting up a new automated warehouse with conveyors and storage / retrieval machines you need a digital twin to test material flow strategies, protocols between systems (mostly WMS <-- --> PLCs) to reduce project time. Same for retrofits when it comes to replace legacy systems like old material flow controllers, PLCs, etc.
In most cases it´s always about planning security and reduction of project time.
So you can configure your conveyor elements and their sensor and drives (kinematics) and build layouts.
Our specificators / configurators offer lots of input values to design your racks / shelves as close to “real shelves” as possible. This is, because our product mainly focuses on warehouse optimization with a special focus on slotting (storage location assignment).
By now, a material can have up to 5 different packaging levels (single item, box qty, layer qty, pallet qty, etc.) and Magellan ´s algos determine where to store a materials qty in a warehouse to meet a cost minimum concerning picking time / cycle time etc.
Therefore we have a functionality named “derive from physics” which gets the dimensions of bins out of a rack´s specification to calculate the storage qtys for arbitrary packaging levels (3D Bin Packing).
This helps planning guys to determine the the number of shelves / racks they need for a warehouse or to figure out which shelf-system (available to the market) fits best.
To get as close to real as possible you can alter almost 60 values of a rack or shelve and position beams and shelf spacers as you like (considering a systems pitch pattern --> holes).
And last but not least, manufacturers and logistics service providers can make awesome layouts with good looking racks. Exploring your warehouse and discover it using xbox controller and HTC Vive is possible and make a lot of fun - it´s all about impressing clients, though the added value mostly lies in the math in the Java-Backend.
Actually our company (valantic) is a consulting firm with a special focus on processes (logistics, production, etc.) and software development. I run the “Advanced Logistics” department. We mainly focus on everything that has to do with SAP EWM and SAP TM. Of course we´re involved in real process control, too. We do this in collaboration with two strong partners who cover the “PLC-side” and the “conveyor-side”.
So we do offer all services our clients expect from a general contractor.
This project looks really cool! I think this software can help a lot of people, you did a great job! I’ve noticed warehouse automation software became really popular nowadays. Found this article about warehouse automation What’s Warehouse Automation Technology and How to Apply It? and it says a lot of companies use it.
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Very interesting, but not functional for my purposes, i have learned a lot from “your code”, i will post my whole work, remember this is open source, and the answer is NO, i am not STEALING anything.
I hope you are well.
