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Case Study. How much does Automated Guided Vehicle AGV maintenance cost?

Before installing an AGV system, you should know how much do your AGVs cost in terms of maintenance.

 

This article explains what are the main factors that define the total maintenance cost of an Automated Guided Vehicle system trough analysing a Case Study.   

All you should know about AGV Maintenance cost

 

You need to define the service level that you wish to have from your AGV supplier that will allow you to have the complete framework enabling you to choose the right partner.

  

Service costs are very important from the very first moment. Every maintenance cost item could change dramatically the competitiveness of a supplier (hourly rates, spare parts cost, ecc). These costs must be considered from the beginning in the supplier benchmark analysis.

 

Maintenance cost is a part of whole AGV System Cost... do you want to know how much does AGV system cost? You cannot miss this article. 

 

AGV cost estimation. How much does an automated guided vehicle cost?

 

How much does AGV maintenance service cost?

  

Automated Guided Vehicles are, in fact, vehicles, so its maintenance it is not so different from other manned vehicles or other machines. Nevertheless, there are some aspects that must be taken into consideration while approaching a new AGV project for your premises.

  

This article will not explain into detail all the maintenance levels, but let's consider that we have:

 

Preventive maintenance

Corrective maintenance (spare parts not included)

Full Service maintenance (preventive+corrective+all spare parts included)

Remote Assistance

 

This article will analyse a "Fiction Case" that will help you to understand how to evaluate AGV Service Offer and will establish the info that you should ask to your potential suppliers before installing an AGV system.

 

The service or maintenance costs could be a big piece of cake in you cost statement.

 

How much does AGV preventive maintenance cost?

What is corrective maintenance? How much does AGV corrective maintenance cost?

What is your AGV supplier intervention time in case of AGV problems?

Importance of spare working saturation of the AGV system

AGV Full-service Maintenance cost

How much is total AGV maintenance cost?

Extraordinary maintenance cost. Costs not covered by the maintenance contract.

Remote Assistance for AGV system

AGV Maintenance cost calculation EXCEL Template

 

At the end of this article you can download an EXCEL template that will allow you to calculate AGV supplier Maintenance cost and perfrom AGV supplier maintenance cost benchmark

  

How much does AGV preventive maintenance cost?

 “Preventive maintenance refers to regular, routine maintenance to help keep equipment up and running, preventing any unplanned downtime and expensive costs from unanticipated equipment failure”

 

So, it is the standard maintenance to be performed time to time depending on:

  • AGV usage level
  • Type of AGV
  • Local laws and regulations

How many times is preventive maintenance needed for an AGV system?

Let’s consider a case study.

“Wonderful AGV” is an AGV supplier located in Stuttgart. They have deployed 10 AGVs with magnetic tape navigation in “Paper Inc” that is located in Berlin. They have agreed that warranty is 2 year.

This is a very important point: What warranty period does your supplier offer?

If you want to know more about different AGV navigations technologies, you can check this article explaining different navigation methods and their advantages and disadvantages. Types of AGV Navigation Systems - Automated Guided Vehicles

"Paper Inc" works 2 shifts and asks "Wonderful AGV" to provide preventive maintenance offer for a 5-year contract.

 

Wonderful AGV offers a total 5 year price of 108.064 €

 

Is it too much? Let’s check the numbers behind this offer.

As any other machine, number of preventive maintenance depends on the number of working hours of the vehicle. Generally, you can consider:

  • One operating shift →Once or twice a year
  • Two operating shifts → Three or four times a year
  • Three shifts → Four to six times a year

In this case, for a 2 shift work, Wonderful AGV requires one preventive maintenance each 4 months.

Thus, 3 times a year, someone from Wondeful AGV must travel to Paper Inc to perform preventive maintenance of nr 10 AGVs.

What do technicians do during the AGV preventive maintenance service?

Preventive maintenance time depends on the vehicle kind.

 

  • For AGVs with forks and big tractors based on manual vehicles, preventive maintenance is the same you have with manual vehicle plus some additional work for extra safety devices and electronics.

 

 

Let’s come back to our case study.

Wonderful AGV is located in Stuttgart that is around 640 km far from Berlin where Paper Inc is located. Considering the number of AGVs, 10, each preventive maintenance will be performed by 2 technicians.

Three times a year, two people must travel near 1.300 km (go&back). Considering the distance and in order to carry some tools with them, technicians will travel with a service van.

At this stage, we must have a look at "Wonderful AGV Service Price List" and dig into it to understand pricing of preventive maintenance.

Preventive maintenance price list should consider this kind of items:

  • Hourly Rate AGV Service technician in your “currency”/hour such €/hour or $/hour, etc

 

  • Some suppliers also provide Hourly rate of Software Engineer, which tends to be much higher

 

  • Hourly rates are divided in
    • Standard Timing, first 8 hours, Monday-Friday
    • Additional hours beyond eighth hour Monday to Friday
    • Saturdays
    • Sundays or holidays
    • These hourly rates can be defined by local regulations

 

  • Transportation cost (van cost, flight ticket, ecc). For service car, you should have a price in currency/km or mile…

 

  • Lunch or dinner cost (Currency/each)

 

  • Accommodation (Currency/night)

 

  • Others such car rental, flight tickets, parking, ecc

Here we have Wonderful AGV Service price list… it’s fair

So, when nr 2 technicians from Stuttgart move to Berlin, they expend one day just for "go" and one day for "back", 2 resources, 2 days mean 32 hours (only for travelling).  

In order to perform preventive maintenance of nr 10 AGVs, they need around 2 hours /each, so total 20 hour (10 hour each technician).

They stay one day in the customer and work 10 hours each = 8 standard hours + 2 extra  hours with price supplement.

Of course, it is not finished. We still must add:

  • Service van cost = 0,8 €/km x 1.300 km
  • Dinner, lunch… and some other expenses that the supplier may consider

Now we have more numbers to understand the initial offer. Adding all the elements we reach 95.964 € for 5 years maintenance.

How do we reach the 108 K€ initially offered?

Preventive maintenance can include some spare parts or components that must be substituted because of normal wear. Suppliers can include wheels, filters, oil .. It depends on the AGV type.

  • Under Cart AGV (AGC) or Small Tugger AGV. Normally, only wheels (and maybe some chain) are included in the wear parts.
  • AGVs like forklifts. Same maintenance as standard forklifts. AGV does not have any additional component further than electronics, lasers and photocells, that, in any case, are not subjected to normal wear.

Let’s admit that this AGV has a lifting table raised by a hydraulic circuit.

At this point you should ask the supplier to provide a complete price list of the spare parts indicating which spare parts are included in the service contract.

Example price list (of course, complete list should be much longer)

In this case, for a 5-year contract, Woderful AGV considers that they must substitute items below

We have finally reached the price offered

Further than the numbers above, it is very important that you carefully check these values while evaluating several suppliers to be sure that they are all offering the same “service”.

For example, we have seen that Standard hourly rate price was 75 €/hour. Considering same conditions, if other supplier offers 45 €/hour, final numbers are like these:

WOW!!! 20 K€ difference!!

Service values are very important from the very first moment. Every cost item can change dramatically the competitiveness of a supplier (hourly rates, spare parts cost, ecc). They must be considered from the beginning in the supplier benchmark analysis.

What is corrective maintenance? How much does AGV corrective maintenance cost?

Let’s just mention Wikipedia:

“Corrective maintenance is a maintenance task performed to identify, isolate, and rectify a fault so that the failed equipment, machine, or system can be restored to an operational condition within the tolerances or limits established for in-service operations”

So corrective maintenance is needed when an AGV has a problem.

PaperInc decides that its maintenance technicians are not ready to repair eventual AGV problems. Paper Inc asks Wonderful AGV to provide an offer for “Corrective Maintenance”.

Here we have to possibilities:

  • Wonderful AGV decides that they do not want to assume the risk of eventual failures.
  • Wonderful AGV decides that they can assume the risk of eventual failures over 5 years contract.

This decision is very important from the supplier reliability point of view.

Standard warranty conditions use to be 12 or 24 months and they use to cover failure parts but not workforce.

So, for example, AGV supplier can send you a new safety laser scanner to substitute a failed one, but you must be able to install and program it. Otherwise, the AGV will send you a technician to perform the task but you’ll have to pay for transfer, workforce, etc.

As indicated in the previous point, Wonderful AGV would invoice near 2.500 € for workforce and transfer costs (for one technician).

There’s a third option that involves remote assistance. But we’ll get into detail later.

So, what happens if Wonderful AGV decides to accept Corrective Maintenance at a flat price? They must figure out how many times a year they’d be obliged to visit the customer because of some AGV failure. This assumption is risky so AGV suppliers tend to overestimate number of interventions.

A good AGV supplier should know what the possibility of failure in a 5 years contract is.

Let’s go ahead with our example.

Wonderful AGV estimates that, considering the kind of AGV and the project, it could be needed to intervene twice a year.

 

 

Again, transfer cost, van cost, working time cost, etc. It could be something like this.

We have additional 7 K€/year what means total 35 K€ in a 5 years contract.

What is your AGV supplier intervention time in case of AGV problems?

Preventive maintenance is programmed with a defined schedule. No one has to run to solve a problem.

If you want to include corrective maintenance (CM) in your service contract, you must define a leadtime for the intervention.

You identify a problem in the AGV, you call the AGV supplier… when does supplier arrive to solve the problem? 24 solar hours, 48 hours? Does it consider Saturdays and Sundays? Does supplier consider standard working time 8-17 or does supplier support 3 shifts time?

How long does supplier need to solve the issue? Does supplier guarantee availability of spare parts? If not, how long does it take to have spare parts available?

All the AGV suppliers recommends having emergency spare parts kit in stock in your premises, doing this way, you minimize risk of lack of spare parts. You should ask your supplier to provide a spare parts emergency kit offer. 

What happens if supplier does not respect repair or intervention time? Are you applying penalties? Does supplier provide a backup AGV?

You must have an answer to all these questions because they will define the time that your system will not work properly or will not work at all.

Importance of spare working saturation of the AGV system

When you buy an AGV system, whenever possible, you should consider having enough AGVs to have a total system saturation that allows you to guarantee mission fulfilment with one AGV out of order, at least for a certain period of time.

For example, your system has 4 agvs with 75% saturation for mission management. Remaining 25% is used for opportunity charging. In case of one AGV failure, you’d have 3 AGVs working at 100% and no time for online charging but you can use battery of the failed AGV to substitute batteries of the other AGVs step by step they discharge. If in this case you had another battery backup for emergency, you could be almost sure that you would not stop mission fulfilment.

Having spare saturation time is also important for preventive maintenance.

During preventive maintenance you cannot use the single AGV, but the system must keep on performing missions. Of course, you can ask the AGV supplier to perform preventive maintenance during night or on Saturdays… but costs would increase.

You can do everything, but you must know all these aspects from the beginning.

AGV Full-service Maintenance cost

Let’s imagine that you do not want to have any responsibility or risk related to your AGV system maintenance.

Maybe you prefer a full-service contract that includes:

  • Preventive maintenance (PM)
  • Corrective maintenance (CM)
  • All spare parts due to PM or CM

With this kind of service, you are sure that you have a flat maintenance price that covers any possible AGV system issue and you can focus on your activity whatever it is: producing, warehouse management, etc.

This point is relatively easy. Remember that you should have a spare part list and a corrective maintenance cost offer.

You only have to add spare parts due to CM on top of other CM cost. So, if you ask to your supplier to provide an offer for a full-service maintenance program. The supplier will assume the risk of failure spare parts to be substituted over the contract duration.

In our case, PaperInc asks Wonderful AGV to provide an offer for full-service of 5 years. Wonderful AGV considers that during that period of time they have to change these items (for example).

So, Wonderful AGV considers that, related to 10 AGVs system, during a period of 5 years, they have to change 6 AGV engines, 8 pin hooks, 9 RFID readers.

Remember that we already had considered other wear spare parts cost in preventive maintenance (wheels, oil, etc)

These numbers are the result of supplier experience and factors such Average time to failure, etc.

The amount of spare parts to be substituted and considered in cost calculation also depends on the warranty conditions that Wonderful AGV has against its suppliers and against PaperInc. 

This is supplier estimation and it is done on its own risk and profit. If Wonderful AGV must change 15 RFID readers instead of 9… it is Wonderful AGV problem. If Wonderful AGV changes 3 RFIDs instead of 9… it is supplier profit.

For this reason, full-service contracts use to be quite expensive.

How much is total AGV maintenance cost?

Here we have the cost summary (in our example)

 

Extraordinary maintenance cost. Costs not covered by the maintenance contract.

Pay attention. No supplier includes maintenance costs due to inappropriate usage of the AGV system or costs due to damages to the AGV system.

I must tell you. It happens very often, customer damages AGVs.

There are many different ways: operator of manual forklift that does not see the AGV, manual tow tractor carrying a ling convoy that impacts a trolley against an AGV, damage of the AGV while moving it with the manual joystick, AGVs passes through a puddle because in you warehouse after last night storm (inappropriate), etc

All these cases are not covered by warranty of corrective maintenance. In this case you have to pay for the supplier intervention, so it is very important that you evaluate into detail the initial Service Price List and the Spare Part Price list.

The risk of having this kind of costs depends on your AGV system.

If for example, you have LGVs working in a segregate warehouse where there is not any human or manual mean, the risk is relatively low.

If for example, you have tow tractors AGVs working in production lines together with operators and manual means, risk is relatively high.

Remote Assistance for the AGV system

Pay attention. Remote Assistance is very important!

Well-structured AGV suppliers offer Remote Assistance (RA). RA enables AGV Supplier technicians to support immediately in case of need.

Generally, RA is performed via Virtual Private Network (VPN). AGV technician can get into AGV system and correct or make diagnosis about potential problem.

With VPN RA, AGV technician can lead customer’s staff to solve the issue.

Verify that your AGV supplier provides this service in your language or be sure that your staff is able to communicate fluently in English.

Remote Assistance offer must consider several aspects such:

  • Maximum time needed  to answer an enquiry from customer. Many suppliers ensure max responsiveness from 30 min to 2 hours. This time is needed because in case there is only one technician available for support, he (or she) must have time enough to finish another task first.

 

  • RA timing support. When is available RA? From 9 to 17? 24 hours support? 5 days a week? 7 days a week? Of course, this is important depending on your working time. 

 

  • How much does support last? You could have FLAT rate, so you call as many times as you wish and engage AGV supplier technician as much as you wish. This kind of service is very expensive, suppliers do not like so much because it is not possible to define how long will a technician be engaged for a defined project and it could create issues to other customers asking for support. Moreover, with this kind of service customers tend to call very often, even if it not necessary.

 

AGV suppliers prefers to offer Remote Assistance consisting in:

  • Defined number of calls (for example 10 calls)
  • Maximum time support (for example 90 hours with maximum 9 hours/day)
  • Extra calls price: (for example 200 $/hour for extra hour)

What happens if remote assistance does not solve the problem?

AGV supplier will not commit to solve the problem only with its Remote Assistance support. It will commit to support and if possible, solve the issue. But it might happen that the RA is not enough to solve the problem. What happens then?

Then you must check again Service Costs Price list because you have to pay for a new technician intervention, paying hourly rates, tickets, transfers, etc.

How long does it take to have technician in house? Again, you must define this with your supplier.

As you can see, it is mandatory that you know from the very beginning the maintenance cost rate from your supplier.

AGV Maintenance cost calculation EXCEL Template

Do you want to save time and money figuring out how much does your AGV system maintenance cost? good news!! you can dowload here below the EXCEL spreadsheet with all the info above. 

DOWNLOAD THE AGV Maintenance Cost Calculation Spreadsheet Here

 

Category: AGV TECHNOLOGY