IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tprsxx/v60y2022i4p1298-1315.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Expected distances and alternative design configurations for automated guided vehicle-based order picking systems

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco J. Aldarondo
  • Yavuz A. Bozer

Abstract

Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV)-based order picking (OP) systems, also known as Robotic Mobile Fulfilment Systems, continues to receive attention in industry and academia since their introduction as Kiva systems. A key component of AGV-based OP systems is the ‘robots’ (or AGVs) that pick up the ‘pods’ and transport them to the appropriate pick station (PS), where a picker picks the items ordered by customers. The performance of such systems depends on the shape of the forward area (FA) and the number of AGVs, which in turn depends on the time it takes an AGV to retrieve a pod. To aid system designers, we explore alternative shapes for the FA and we derive closed-form expressions for the expected AGV travel distances under two possible order assignment rules. Under the random assignment rule, an order is assigned to any PS with equal probability. Under the closest assignment rule, the order is assigned to the closest PS. We also examine the impact of alternative PS configurations for different shapes of the FA. The results offer valuable insights concerning expected travel distances under alternative design configurations. The results would also be useful when building design and performance evaluation models for AGV-based OP systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco J. Aldarondo & Yavuz A. Bozer, 2022. "Expected distances and alternative design configurations for automated guided vehicle-based order picking systems," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 60(4), pages 1298-1315, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:60:y:2022:i:4:p:1298-1315
    DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2020.1856438
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2020.1856438
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00207543.2020.1856438?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Silva, Allyson & Roodbergen, Kees Jan & Coelho, Leandro C. & Darvish, Maryam, 2022. "Estimating optimal ABC zone sizes in manual warehouses," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 252(C).
    2. Ding, Tianrong & Zhang, Yuankai & Wang, Zheng & Hu, Xiangpei, 2024. "Velocity-based rack storage location assignment for the unidirectional robotic mobile fulfillment system," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:60:y:2022:i:4:p:1298-1315. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TPRS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.