Throughput Analysis of S/r Shuttle Systems

This study explores the best warehouse design for an autonomous vehicle based storage and retrieval system (AVS/RS) minimizing average energy consumption per transaction and average cycle time per transaction, simultaneously. In the design concept, we consider, rack design in terms of number of bays, number of tiers, number of aisles; number of resources, namely number of autonomous vehicles and lifts and; velocity profiles of lifts and autonomous vehicles in the AVS/RS. We completed 1,296 number of experiments in simulation to obtain Pareto solutions representing the “average energy consumption per transaction” and “average cycle time per transaction” trade-offs based on designs which is a very useful visual tool in decision making. Different from the existing studies, we approach to the warehouse design problem of AVS/RSs from a multi-objective view as well as energy efficient view minimizing both electricity consumption and cycle time per transaction in the system.