Release Notes - Q4 2022 - Release 1.8 "Draco"

To finish off the year, we focused on bringing more stability and flexibility to our Mobile Robots Solution and adding some exciting new features to our Warehouse Execution Solution. Mobile Robots sees the addition of a Job API to our already existing Order API, giving customers the flexibility to orchestrate their shop floor on either the order or job level.

We’re also excited to tell you about some improvements in our traffic management and how we handle Just-In-Sequence transport orders.

Meanwhile, we’ve been very busy on improving the feature set of our Warehouse Execution Solution by adding abilities for two-stage storage and picking orders as well as consolidating customer orders. This now allows us to manage the full journey from put away to picking, which has already been put to good use at Connox during their Black Friday peak.

We’ve also streamlined the put away process for workers in the warehouse, allowing them to store all items from one box in a slot with just one scan, dramatically increasing the speed and efficiency of the put away process.

Finally, we’ve conducted some fundamental changes to our release provisioning and failover procedures, which will give customers much more flexibility and security, respectively.

New Features

Mobile Robots | Job API

Besides the already available public order interface, we have developed an additional REST API to interact with our system on job level. Jobs are intralogistics tasks conducted by one transport ressource and can be seen as the building blocks to get an intralogistics order done. The new Job API allows for (1) the creation and assignment of jobs (e.g. Tour Job) to transport ressources, (2) the updating of their targets and (3) the gathering of job status information (e.g. start/ finish events).

Warehouse | Two-staged put away and pick

We’ve launched our new two-staged put away and pick support feature. With this system, items are first placed in a temporary holding area before being moved to their final location within the warehouse. This can be especially useful when the final location of an item is not immediately known or when there are capacity constraints in certain areas of the warehouse.

In the put away process, items are received and temporarily stored on lower levels before being moved to their designated spot on a higher level, helping to prevent bottlenecks in the receiving process. And in the pick process, items are first retrieved from their long-term storage slots and brought to a more accessible area, where they can be picked more easily, streamlining the picking process and reducing the time spent walking back and forth to retrieve items.

Warehouse | Consolidation

As soon as picked orders have been placed in the consolidation zone, our Warehouse Execution Solution generates area-specific consolidation lists, so that items are combined and transferred to the right fulfilment area to minimize delays.

We support consolidation racks and plan the optimal slot allocation by generating the information in which slot the item is to be placed. This can depend, for example, on how full the compartments already are or whether an item of a customer order is already in a compartment.

Improvements

Mobile Robots | Considering ommitted envelopes within Bi-Directional Deadlock Detection

Ommitted envelopes for nodes and edges will be now considered within our Bi-Directional Deadlock Detection algorithm, thus further improving our deadlock detection capabilities. This improves the accuracy of our traffic management and leads to fewer deadlock situations on your shop floor.

Mobile Robots | Configurable JIS behavior

Up until this release, Just-in-sequence (JIS) transports were modelled in such a way that AGVs do not start the next transport order until the previous order is completed. While this behavior is intentional to avoid unnecessary traffic movements, there are situations where it might not be beneficial if the transport time from pick to drop location is greater than the cycle time of the production line - meaning the production line will stop due to a delayed AGV.

In such situations it would be more beneficial if the succeeding AGV starts moving to the drop location as early as possible while still maintaining the correct order of JIS transports to ensure that the cycle time is not violated. We’ve made it possible for administrators to configure this JIS behaviour.

Mobile Robots | Enhanced notification icons

We've listened to our users and have made it easier to identify and understand notifications with larger icons and tooltips on hover, providing you with additional information or context.

Warehouse | One scan to store all items in a box in a slot

We’ve streamlined the put away process in your warehouse! With just one scan, you can now store all items in a slot, making it faster and easier to keep your warehouse organized. This feature saves you time and effort, allowing you to focus on other important tasks. Plus, with everything in its designated spot, you can easily locate items when you need them.

Platform | More flexible approach

We’ve improved our approach for provisioning and providing releases of the SYNAOS IMP to on-premise customers. It brings more flexibility to the release to meet the requirements of customer environments while at the same time being optimized for continuous development processes and SaaS environments. The release is provided via standard artifacts based on Helm Charts and OCI container images, which can be pulled by customers from an OCI-compliant Registry/Repository. Access is controlled per customer to provide customer-specific versions of the release. Additionally, a Release Bill of Material (BOM) is provided with every release to help customers track dependencies. The versioning of individual services and packages has also changed, reducing build and provisioning time for release distribution, especially for incremental releases.

Platform | Improved failover database support

The integration of Gruelbox in this release allows high-availability in our database environment, ensuring shared system data remains consistent among application services, reduces the risk of system downtimes in the event of a primary instance failure. This upgrade replaces the former platform service Debezium and allows for seamless operation in a high-availability configuration with failover capabilities. This is a significant step forward in providing a more reliable and robust platform environment to our customers.

Bug Fixes

• The route for tour orders is now displayed in both the Shop Floor and Order Tracking views.
• Navigation graph no longer shown after deselection on the Shop Floor filter.
• AGVs are no longer clickable if they have been filtered out from the Shop Floor view.
• Elements are now clickable when switching to the Order Tracking view and back to the Shop Floor view.
• Some traffic lights were malfunctioning due to an incorrect counter. They are now in the right order.
• Error notifications now disappear once they are no longer relevant.

Draco, or dragons, are often depicted as powerful and fearsome, but they can also have positive traits such as wisdom, nobility, courage, loyalty, and strength. They have a deep understanding of the world and its ways and use their strength to defend the weak and protect the innocent.

‍