Warehouse Storing and Collecting of Parts

Almeida, Jorge and Cerdeira, J. Orestes and Cruz, Manuel and Vasconcelos, Paulo B. (2008) Warehouse Storing and Collecting of Parts. European Study Group with Industry > 65th ESGI [Porto 21/4/2008 - 24/4/2008].

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Abstract/Summary

This report deals with reducing the high costs resulting from the wear and tear of the fork-lifts used to store or collect items in a warehouse. Two problems were identified and addressed separately. One concerns the way items should be stored or collected at storage locations on the shelves of one corridor. The other problem seeks for an efficient way to define which fork-lift should operate on each corridor, and the order by which the fork-lifts should visit the corridors.

We give to both problems formulations that fit in the framework of combinatorial optimization.

Item Type:	Study Group Report
Study Group:	European Study Group with Industry > 65th ESGI [Porto 21/4/2008 - 24/4/2008]
Company Name:	GROHE
Industrial Sector:	Retail None/Other
ID Code:	184
Deposited By:	Michele Taroni
Deposited On:	29 October 2008

Problem Statement

The purpose of this problem is to optimize the time taken by fork-lifts to collect and store parts in a warehouse. There are three fork-lifts collecting parts from the shelves and taking them to a fixed base point, per each corridor, denoted by $B_i$ . At the same time, they take parts from B and store them in the shelves. At each point in time, a given fork-lift may carry only one type of part which is to be either stored or collected. The storage place of a given part is predetermined. Denoting the parts to be collected and stored by $C _1,\ldots,C_m$ and $S_1,\ldots,S_m$ , respectively, we want to produce a list with the optimal pairing of $C_i$ 's to $S_j$ 's (leaving $|m-n|$ items unpaired if necessary) which minimizes the total storage-collection time. Possible further questions include the optimization of the layout of the shelves, and also of the organization of the storage of parts depending on past history.

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