Purdue Polytechnic Institute's new AutoStore automated storage and retrieval system will offer a logistics and warehousing experience for students.
As manufacturers struggle to fill roles, hands-on education is becoming more critical in higher education.
Case in point is Purdue Polytechnic Institute’s new AutoStore automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS). The system, which will be fully installed at the institute’s Smart Learning Factory by the end of this summer, will offer students the chance to engage with an automated warehouse environment. The warehouse was installed as part of Purdue’s partnership with Element Logic.
Steve Musick, smart manufacturing engineer with the institute’s Smart Learning Factory, said the warehouse is just one hands-on element of Purdue’s engineering technology program.
“At Purdue right now, we’re in Purdue’s newest building,” Musick told Plant Engineering in an interview. “With that, our school of engineering technology, we built four brand-new labs in smart manufacturing. We have our Smart Learning Factory, which is where I am now. We also have a continuous process lab, an industrial IoT (internet of things)/PLC (programmable logic controller) lab and a smart foundry in the basement.”
Engineering students get hands-on factory experience
The goal, Musick said, is to give Purdue’s engineering technology students exposure to an industrial environment and the emerging technologies in manufacturing and industry.
“Particularly here in the factory, we’re running this as a production factory,” he said. “We’re building a product from beginning to end, and so the goal was that we could give students a snapshot of all the different facets in a manufacturing environment.”
The AS/RS is the latest manufacturing segment these students will be able to explore, giving them training in material handling systems they’ll encounter on the job as an engineer.
It’s a feature that appeals to supply chain students specifically, Musick said, but it’s a critical component of the functional warehouse.
AMRs can move materials
The system will have about 100 bins for storing parts for the product being built. Students can access these bins manually, Musick said, but the institute is also building in additional transport so bins could be picked and placed by autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).
“Those AMRs can automatically deliver parts to the line and deliver parts ultimately around the building, including taking an elevator down to the foundry,” Musick said.
The goal is to give students exposure to materials flowing in and out of the factory.
“By giving students live access to the same cube-storage automation trusted by leading global retailers, we’re turning classroom concepts into hands-on data, KPIs [key performance indicators] and real-time problem solving,” Robert Humphry, executive vice president of Element Logic said in a statement from Purdue.
The factory offers a host of machinery
The Smart Learning Factory at Purdue offers a host of machines with which students can interact. Everything from PLCs to computer numerical control (CNC) machines are available to students.
“The goal is that we want to give students exposure to technology and let them work with it, not just to train them on how it runs and how to operate it, but we let them,” Musick said. “You’ll get that experience with operating it.”
AS/RS available in the fall
The new AutoStore AS/RS system will be available to students returning to Purdue Polytechnic in the fall, Musick said. For now, Musick and a team of student workers are training on the system throughout the summer.
“We will go through the training and see how this works and operates,” he said.
