This article deals with the implementation of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in a selected company. The aim is to analyse the use of AGVs in our country and abroad and to provide information about the use of AGVs in other countries and operations other than ours. The result of the analysis was a literature review, which points out the individual advantages and disadvantages of the use of AGVs in companies. Within the review we also address the issue of AMR vehicles, due to the modernization of existing AGVs in the company, or the replacement of AMRs with AGVs in general. Our aim is to show why AGVs can replace human work. This is mainly because of the continuous increase in the wages of employees, because of safety, but also because of the modernization of the selected company. The company has positive experience of AGVs in other sites. We wanted to point out a higher form of automation, and how it would be possible to use AMR vehicles for the same work as AGVs. In the company, we have identified jobs where we would like to introduce AGVs or AMR vehicles. Consequently, we chose the AGV from CEIT operated by magnetic tape and the AMR from SEER as an example. Based on studies, the demand for AGVs is expected to increase by up to 17% in 2019–2024. Therefore, the company is looking into the issue of the implementation of AGVs at multiple sites. The question which remains is the economic return and the possibility of investing in the automation of processes in the company, which we discuss in more detail in the conclusion of the article and in the research. The article describes the exact processes for AGVs, their workload, and also the routes for AGVs, such as loading/unloading points, stopping points, checkpoints, junctions with other AGVs, charging stations, and field elements, as well as their speed, frequency and the possibility of collision with other AGVs. Our research shows that by applying the new technology, the company will save a large amount of money on employee wages. The purchase of two AGVs will cost the company EUR 49,000, while the original technology used in the company cost EUR 79,200 annually. The payback period for such an investment is 8 months. The benefits of implementing AGVs are evaluated in the last section of this paper, where both the economic and time requirements of the different proposals are included. This section also includes recommendations for improving specific parts of the enterprise.

The article focuses on expanding the use of barcodes in selected logistics activities in a company. Our study discusses the application of barcode technology to selected logistics activities in the company in order to address the error rate in these activities and to control ownership of this technology in other logistics activities within the company during the COVID-19. The priority of the testing phase was to point out the elimination of errors in the original versus the newly proposed solution for the company on 10 products. In the test phase, the 10 products with the highest turnover in the company were used to point out the elimination of errors in various logistics activities, especially the time saved compared to the work of human personnel in the company. The company has this technology at its disposal, in the parent company as well as in the subsidiary. It was only a matter of expanding the use and applicability of this technology as well as other possibilities for research hypotheses, which we outlined at the end of the article. In this article, we focus on RFID and barcode technologies, since the company initially considered using RFID technology, however, chose the use of barcodes because it was an already known work technology. The current situation affected with COVID-19 disease requires many advantages and disadvantages of both technologies.

Transport is one of the most important economic sectors in the world. It is a fundamental and important element of a country’s GDP. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is considered one of the most important indicators of economic performance of a country. GDP can be compiled for both a country and a region. Changes in technology and economic structure of the production system of an area are the central issues of long-term economic growth according to the increase in the gross value added of a region. In this paper, the authors focus on finding out how the development of road freight transport performance affects the economy of a region. At the same time, they try to answer the question to what extent transport regulation can influence the economic development of an area. The research is mainly focused on EU policies aimed at regulating road freight transport.

The first specialized road-rail combined transport operators were founded by road hauliers, who experienced road capacity bottlenecks and collaborating railways in the late 1960s in Europe. Combined transport is thus the optimal embodiment of the European concept of co-modality, whereby the strengths of both participating modes of transport – road and rail – can best be exploited: the flexibility of road transport in pre- and post- haulage, while the low energy need, safety, speed and reliability of rail transport.

In this paper, we will compare two solution options to determine whether the deployment of an autonomous mobile robot will be a beneficial investment for a company not only in terms of cost, time, and manpower savings, but also in terms of efficiency and reliability in the implementation of selected logistics processes to ensure the smooth running of production. In this paper, we would like to analyse the technology in terms of functions, carrying capacity, and interconnection within the infrastructure in the enterprise. The logistics processes from material order to export to the final customer will be analysed when an automatically controlled robot is deployed. One of the solutions discusses the use of personnel and material handling equipment (tractor with transport kit). The second solution discusses the deployment of the robot and selected logistics processes. The paper concludes with a summary of both options in terms of time, cost, and efficiency of the solution.

The issue of the transport of goods is well-known, yet, in practice, there are often cases of damaged shipments due to improper storage and inappropriately chosen transport technology. Many cases are due to ignorance of the basic characteristics of the cargo and, consequently, its transport characteristics. Vehicle dynamics is crucial to the design of proper cargo securing; therefore, this article provides the values of longitudinal and lateral acceleration of a 16.5 m semi-trailer vehicle combination for test routes of length of 10,827 km on highways and other roads in Slovakia, Austria, and Germany from the monitoring of goods. The horizontal acceleration of 0.2 g is considered as the minimum stability of the load unit that should withstand transport. A load unit with a stability from 0.2 g to 0.3 g could be considered as the weakest load unit. The test results show that even the weakest load units such as these can be damaged in transports, as semi-trailer vehicle combinations still reach longitudinal ax1000 and lateral ay1000 accelerations between 0.2 g and 0.3 g relatively frequently. Acceleration events higher than 0.3 g occur very rarely, at 1.4 event/1000 km for roads, but only 0.1 event/1000 km for highways from our test transports. We have demonstrated through our research that it is necessary for the load units to have a minimum stability of 0.2 g. We can conclude that load units with a stability of less than 0.2 g are completely unacceptable for transport without additional securing because we obtained 70.3 acceleration events per 1000 km in the interval from 0.1 g to 0.2 g on highways but 1148.1 events per 1000 km on other roads. There is a big difference between the number of acceleration events per 1000 km on roads and highways for all acceleration intervals, which means that there is a substantially lower probability of damaging the weak load units on highways than on other roads.