Method and plant for managing the production cycle of a plant in a process for building tyres for vehicle wheels

A transfer apparatus for feeding anchoring annular structures to a forming drum associated with a processing station for building a tyre for vehicle wheels comprising:

• a basket designed to house a plurality of anchoring annular structures, said basket comprises support members provided for supporting said anchoring annular structures, each supporting member includes an abutment wall comprising a pair of coplanar fins separated from one another by a recess,
• wherein each anchoring annular structure is supported by a respective supporting member at a respective support portion that is defined by a single circular sector at an upper portion of the anchoring annular structure's internal circumference, and
• wherein an uppermost support portion of each anchoring annular structure spans a corresponding recess of its respective supporting member;
• a picking up device comprising a gripper for picking up a first anchoring annular structure of the plurality of anchoring annular structures from its uppermost support portion by inserting the gripper into the first anchoring annular structure's corresponding recess of its respective supporting member when the first anchoring annular structure reaches a predetermined picking-up position in three dimensional space, wherein said picking up device is movable between said predetermined picking-up position and at least one release position for releasing the first anchoring annular structure to said processing station, and said predetermined picking-up position does not change if anchoring annular structures of the plurality of anchoring annular structures have differing diameters.