An Intelligent Digital Twin for an Automated Warehouse

A manufacturing company that produces Aluminum profiles uses extrusion, cutting, straightening, heat treatment, and coatings processes. The warehouse of the company uses an automated warehouse with a loading/ unloading stacker (crane) and an AGV fleet.
The goals of this project which are summarized below are to develop an intelligent digital twin for the warehouse, which the company will then use to test and simulate various scenarios in the production and market demand and its effect on warehouse operation.
Designing, implementing, and evaluating an I-IoT system for the shelves of the warehouse to measure the accurate content of inventory at each cell of the warehouse
Designing, implementing, and evaluating the digital twin of the automated warehouse and its AGV fleet
Designing, implementing, and evaluating optimization algorithms to enhance the path planning operation of the loader/unloader stackers and AGVs
The proposed project will be carried out by a team of researchers led by Dr. Farshid Najafi at Simon Fraser University with unique laboratories in Digital Twin, Industrial Internet of Things, and Smart Manufacturing which will support the research project. The supporting organization, Longboard Architectural Products, manufactures aluminum products that are used for architectural cladding, siding, soffits, and ceilings.

Faculty Supervisor:

Farshid Najafi

Student:

Partner:

Longboard Architectural Products

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program: