Design and control of an AS/RS

Automated storage/retrieval systems (AS/RSs) are a combination of equipment and controls which automatically handle, store and retrieve materials (components, tools, raw material and subassemblies) with great speed and accuracy. Consequently, they are widely used in industrial companies to manage products with cost-effective utilization of time, space and equipment. This paper presents a multi-parametric dynamic model of a product-to-picker storage system with class based storage allocation of products. Thousands of what-if scenarios are simulated in order to measure the impact of alternative design and operating configurations on the expected system performance and to identify the most critical factors and combinations of factors affecting the response of the system. Class based storage proves to be a very effective way of both reducing the picking cycle time and maximizing the throughput of the system. The rapid effectiveness of visual interactive simulation (VIS) in supporting the design (redesign) and control of new (existing) warehouses emerges, responding to the need for flexibility which modern companies need in order to adapt to strongly changing operating conditions quickly.