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Xiong-zhi Wang [1] and Guo-qing Wang [2] and Xiao-chun Li [3]

Academic Editor: Dan Wang

, 1, , College of Economics and Management, , South China Agriculture University, , Guangzhou 510642, , China, , scau.edu.cn,

, 2, , Department of Business Administration, , Jinan University, , Guangzhou 510632, , China, , jnu.edu.cn,

, 3, , Department of Information & Engineering, , South Chinese Normal University (Nanhai Campus), , Nanhai, , Guangdong 528225, , China, , scnu.edu.cn,

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

Carousels storage system is commonly referred to as an automated computer controlled system which is widely used to store and pick small, light, and highly demanded items, as an effective warehousing facility. It has been used in links of the supply chain: by manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Standard carousel system consists of a carousel which may hold many different products stored in bins that rotate along a closed loop and a picker (either human or robotic) who occupies a fixed position at the front of the carousel (see Figure 1). To retrieve a product, the carousel system automatically rotates (clockwise or counterclockwise) the bin with the requested product to the position of the picker. Accordingly, it is referred to as a product-to-picker system. The operator may effectively use the rotation time of the carousel for activities such as sorting, packaging, or labeling of the retrieved goods. To expand the merits and further reduce the waiting time for a picker, multiple carousels are integrated so that while a carousel is for picking, others can convey items simultaneously. Some of its advantages include increased efficiency derived from bringing parts to picker instead of sending picker to parts, high speed storage and retrieval, low installation and operating cost, and efficient space utilization.

[figure omitted; refer to PDF]

While companies are finding it important to optimize the operation of their carousel systems to gain a competitive edge in such environments, there are quite a few technical publications on the planning and control of carousels. Bartholdi III and Platzman [1] consider sequencing of picks in a single order. They assume that the...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                    

                                

 

 

 

   

 

                       

 

 

   

 

          

 

                             

 

     

 

 

 

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