Title: Time-based models for unit load warehouse control

Authors: Ahmed Hassan Aly; Nadeepa Wickramage; William G. Ferrell Jr.

Addresses: BMW Manufacturing Co., LLC, Greer, South Carolina, USA ' Albany State University, Albany, Georgia, USA ' Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, USA

Abstract: Many facilities in supply chains have pallets and containers that can be stacked. Stacking containers during material handling can improve the efficiency of warehouse operations; however, this has largely been ignored by researchers. A time-based model is proposed to generate routes that material handling vehicles use for picking and storing containers that includes the ability to stack pallets during transport and to use multi-command operations. For warehouses that store and pick millions of containers each year, small improvements in each trip can have a dramatic cumulative effect on the annual cost savings.

Keywords: multi-command operations; warehouse operations; time-based warehouse models.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2020.112184

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2020 Vol.36 No.4, pp.512 - 536

Accepted: 08 Jun 2019
Published online: 04 Jan 2021 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article