In the newspaper business, timing and efficiency is everything. That's certainly true for Canada's single largest newspaper, the Toronto Star, which ships 3.5 million newspapers a week. Continuously converting rolls of paper into newspapers, however, eventually became a challenging task for the Star's old fleet of wire-guided automatic guided vehicles (AGVs).

Making routing changes to the wire-guided systems was difficult, time-consuming and expensive so the Star limited the number of changes. This compromised productivity though, particularly in the reel room where 20 of the old vehicles were required to handle 110,000 rolls of paper a year. Also, many of the 36 old AGVs used in the mailing room were unreliable.

That's when an upgrade to laser-guided AGVs with laser bumpers came into play. The Toronto Star purchased 19 fork-style vehicles for the reel room to transfer the 2,200-pound rolls of paper from unwrapping stations to the warehouse and to the printing presses. The new laser-guided system allows employees to quickly download a new vehicle route and test it in under and hour. The newspaper can also track product from the paper mill to the reel stand as well as track the exact location of each paper roll within the production process.

Thirty of the outdated AGVs in the mailing room were retrofitted with laser navigation technology as well. The new AGVs receive jobs generated by a proprietary advanced host system in both the reel and mailing rooms. Orders are passed to the AGVs' control system, which monitors system and material movement throughout the facility. Once an AGV receives an order, it determines the optimal path and carries out that order. The vehicles use laser bumpers to detect objects and personnel prior to contact, minimizing vehicle downtime and ensuring worker safety.