Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2006) 28: 766–774

DOI 10.1007/s00170-004-2427-6

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Riccardo Manzini · Mauro Gamberi · Alberto Regattieri

Design and control of an AS/RS

Received: 10 May 2004 / Accepted: 21 September 2004 / Published online: 25 May 2005
© Springer-Verlag London Limited 2005

Abstract Automated storage/retrieval systems (AS/RSs) are be able to deliver products on time, maintain market credibil-
a combination of equipment and controls which automatically ity and introduce new products and services faster than com-
handle, store and retrieve materials (components, tools, raw ma- petitors. In particular, recent growth and strong development
terial and subassemblies) with great speed and accuracy. Conse- of e-commerce has brought a new focus on warehousing fa-
quently, they are widely used in industrial companies to manage cilities and especially on the design and management of order
products with cost-effective utilization of time, space and equip- picking systems (OPS) where typically thousands of customers’
ment. This paper presents a multi-parametric dynamic model of orders have to be processed per day. This is especially true
a product-to-picker storage system with class based storage allo- in e-fulfillment (e.g., business to consumer – B2C fulfillment),
cation of products. Thousands of what-if scenarios are simulated because internet consumers generally order one to two prod-
in order to measure the impact of alternative design and oper- ucts in small quantities achieving a one-day cycle time for
ating configurations on the expected system performance and to orders [1].
identify the most critical factors and combinations of factors af- Order picking (OP) can be defined as the retrieval of items
fecting the response of the system. Class based storage proves from their warehouse locations in order to satisfy demands from
to be a very effective way of both reducing the picking cycle internal or external customers: it is a process of gathering re-
time and maximizing the throughput of the system. The rapid ef- quested stock keeping units one order at a time. Picking oper-
fectiveness of visual interactive simulation (VIS) in supporting ations are carried out by a great many large and medium-sized
the design (redesign) and control of new (existing) warehouses companies, which belong to different industrial and service sec-
emerges, responding to the need for flexibility which modern tors. OPSs can be classified as picker to part (or product) systems
companies need in order to adapt to strongly changing operating when the picker travels to picking locations, and part (or prod-
conditions quickly. uct) to picker if materials are automatically brought to the picker.
A well-know example of part to picker OPS is represented by au-
Keywords Automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) · tomatic storage/retrieval systems (AS/RS), which are a response
Class based storage · Factorial analysis · Order picking system to the increasing trend towards both the automation of warehous-
(OPS) · Warehousing system · What-if scenarios ing operations and the increasing labor costs [2]. Other related
available automated technological options and devices are the
automated guided vehicles (AGV), pick list generation software,
1 Introduction bar coding, etc.
The aim of this study is to identify the most critical factors
New, global and extended markets are forcing companies to affecting the response (i.e., the performance) of an AS/RS based
process and manage increasingly differentiated products with on the prevailing activity of picking.
shorter life cycles, low volumes and reduced customer deliv- AS/RSs are computer-directed storage and transport facil-
ery times. In today’s global marketplace companies need to ities for large capacity and high volumes of handled materi-
als. They consist of storage racks erected along aisles with
R. Manzini (u) · M. Gamberi · A. Regattieri unique or un-unique cell conveyors, input/output (I/O) sta-
Department of Industrial Mechanical Plants, tions for receiving and sending items, and storage/retrieval
University of Bologna, (S/R) machines for providing transport between I/O stations
Viale Risorgimento, 2., 40136 Bologna, Italy and storage cells. The automated stacker crane (i.e the S/R ve-
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel.: +39-51-2093406 hicle) travels within an aisle performing storage and retrieval
Fax: +39-51-2093411 operations.
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When considering the retrieval activity, there are two princi- AS/RS, for both single command and dual command with in-
pal macro classes of OPSs: terleaving cycles (i.e., cycles performed on an opportunistic
• Unit load systems. Materials are moved and stored by devices basis where a retrieval transaction is combined with a storage
capable of moving and storing only a single-unit handling transaction), are presented by [26–30]. All these studies are gen-
load (e.g., pallets, odette boxes). erally based on analytical models and involve a small number
• Less than unit load systems. With multiple stops per trip. Ve- of multi-level parameters because of the NP-hard computational
hicles are capable of handling multiple unit loads simultan- complexity of the optimizing problem [21, 23, 24, 31, 32]. This
eously. Order pickers, who can be identified with operators- is especially true for the less than unit load OPS optimization
aboard retrieval vehicles (in picker to part systems) or with problem (OPSP), which is the object of this study.
S/R automated machines in AS/RSs, the object of this study, The most important planning issues concerning the design
retrieve sets of items or multiple handling units of the same and management of both picker to part and part to picker OPSs
item on a single OP cycle. They visit different slots in the can be addressed on two levels (i.e., the level of policies and the
warehouse before returning to the I/O or depot areas. Each level of operations) and grouped into three main operating strate-
picker is responsible for picking a complete pool of customer gies [21–24, 33]:
orders during a mission [3]. • Storage location assignment and fulfillment policies, i.e., the
assignment of items to storage locations;
The aim of this study is to identify and measure the combined
• Order consolidation, i.e., the transformation of customer
and not combined effects of different system parameterizations
orders into picking orders;
on the performance of both unit load and less than unit load part
• Routing and sequencing, i.e., the identification of the routing
to picker OPS.
The following section discusses the principal AS/RS and of pickers through the warehouse.
OPS studies in the literature. Section 3 presents the storage loca- The purpose of Sects. 3 and 4 is to present different alternative
tion policies and particularly the class-based policy for the opti- policies for each of these groups of strategies.
mization of warehousing systems. Section 4 discusses batching
2.1 OPS performance evaluation
procedures for the reduction of picking cycle time and presents
the proposed genetic algorithm based on cellular automation. There are a great many different criteria for the evaluation of
Sections 5 and 6 present a dynamic model and related results an OPS performance, but in the literature travel time (picking
based on simulation for the what-if analysis of different OPS cycle time) is commonly used: this is the expected amount of
configurations that work in different operating scenarios. time for the S/R machine to perform a list of storage or re-
trieval operations. In fact, the throughput of OPS is normally the
inverse of the travel time. The literature demonstrates that the
2 Literature overview OP travel time accounts for about 50% of all OP activities [34],
while system cost accounts for over 65% of total operating costs
Manzini et al. [4] and Ferrari et al. [5, 6] discuss the importance for a typical warehouse [13, 14, 35].
of flexibility, i.e., the ability of a system to adapt to changing Reference [3] lists the principal contributors to the total pick-
market demands in terms of both product variations or changes ing cycle time:
(capability flexibility) and product quantity (capacity flexibil- • Administrative time at the I/O point, at the start and end of
ity). Consequently, the importance of flexibility is progressively a tour.
emerging in inventory management and in picking activities (in • Processing time the time spent extracting items and docu-
particular in automated S/R systems). menting the picking activity.
Several studies discuss the importance of integrating AS/RS • Travel time between pick locations.
with other flexible devices, such as flexible manufacturing sys- The importance of reducing picking variable traveling cycle time
tems (FMSs) and AGVs. They present algorithms and proced- emerges: it is a monotone increasing function of the distance
ures to support the optimization (e.g., storage allocation of ma- traveled. For this reason the measure of the mean distance trav-
terials, storage and retrieval sequencing) of the whole production eled in a picking cycle is a significant indicator of the perform-
system [7–10]. ance of the generic OPS. This distance is adopted as the response
A large set of studies discuss picker to part OPSs [2, 3, 11– (i.e., the performance) of the generic OPS in order to compare
24]. In particular, the authors of this paper present in-depth different configurations (i.e., system parameterizations) and op-
studies of the design and management of flexible picker to part timize the management of the whole system.
OPSs [21–24]: principal factors affecting the performance of the
picking activities are identified and their effects are measured
and compared. 3 Storage location policies
The literature presents many studies supporting the design
and control of an AS/RS. In particular, Sharker and Babu [25] The literature discusses storage location assignment strategies at
present a review and comparison of analytical travel-time models great length [24, 36]. It is possible to discriminate two macro-
in unit-load AS/RS. Other significant studies on unit-load classes of assignment storage location rules:
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• Storage location assignment policies. The selection of open • Dedicated storage. Materials are assigned to predetermined
locations for incoming unit loads are subject to imposed locations based on throughput and storage requirements.
constraints. • Service level assignment. The aim of this policy is to deter-
• Open locations selection rules (e.g., closest open location, mine the minimum size that satisfies a service-level objective
nearest neighbor) when the policy does not make a unique (expressed as a probability of a space shortage) in random-
selection. ized or dedicated storage.
Warehouse assignment-dispatching rules are differentiated by • Correlated storage policy. This is based on correlations be-
the objective they address; known examples are [3, 4, 12, 15, 33, tween products, and reduces OP travel times by storing cor-
34, 36–41]: related products close to each other.
Randomized and dedicated storage are extreme cases of the
• Class based storage policy. It partitions all products into
class-based storage policy: the former only considers one class
a number of classes and reserves a physical portion within
while dedicated storage policy assigns a class to each product;
racks for each class. This storage policy is generally man-
in other words, class-based storage is a compromise between the
aged according to the dispatching rule based on the cube per
randomized and dedicated storage policies.
order index (COI) introduced by [42]. It is defined as the
ratio of the number of storage addresses allocated to an item
and the number of transactions per period. This rule is ap-
plied by routing incoming items with lowest values to the 4 Batching and routing procedures
most accessible (nearest to I/O points) storage addresses of
a facility. In class-based storage policy each class is assigned The order consolidation policies rearrange customer orders into
to a block of storage locations: for this reason the size of picking orders. In single order picking each customer order, gen-
classes and distributions of products among them have to be erally made of multiple items to be picked within the system
properly designed. Within each block of storage locations, (less than unit load OPS), is directly taken as a picking order.
material is generally stored randomly. The CL-K notation In order batching picking several customer orders are combined
denotes the number of classes (K ) according to a class-based into a batch, i.e., a single picking order of requests (picking lines
policy. Several authors demonstrate that storage policy based in the picking list) belonging to different customers. The litera-
on COI and its correlated assignment rule are the most ef- ture presents a great many studies proposing clustering proced-
fective with respect to random storage in unit load picking ures to solve the batching problem [24, 45–49]. In the proposed
systems [43–45]. Studies on picker to part less than unit study the order batching problem is defined as follows: given
load OPS with a class based storage policy are presented a set of orders, each consisting of a number of orderlines, how
by [21, 22], and [23]. Any shape is possible for each: rect- can the amount of orderlines be batched into picking orders ac-
angular, triangular etc. [38]. Park and Webster [37] present cording to the capacity of the picking device?
some algorithms for minimizing travel times according to Reference [24] identifies and discusses three principal fami-
a class-based storage assignment and in three dimensional lies of heuristic order batching algorithms:
storage systems: they refer to L-shaped classes in automated 1. Priority rule-based algorithms,
OPS. Reference [40] studies the impact of combining storage 2. Seed algorithms,
policy, tour construction heuristic and storage rack configu- 3. Saving algorithms.
ration on AS/RS travel time. Reference [3] develops a study The group of research compares two different algorithms. Firstly,
on the OPS optimization based in particular on the shape and a large set of scenarios are simulated according to the first come
trend of the COI-based ABC curve. first serve (FCFS) batching rule, i.e., customer orders and related
• Turnover based storage policy. Items with highest transac- orderlines are assigned to batches one by one, picking orders of
tion demand are stored in the most accessible addresses. In a defined number of orderlines (i.e., a parameterized number of
particular, in continuous policy all rack locations are classi- slots to be visited) according to the application of the shortest path
fied according to the following non-decreasing value: (SP) routing policy [50]. Secondly, a heuristic rule based on ge-
netic programming and cellular automation [51] applied to the
t jin + t jout (1) traveling salesman problem (TSP) with Chebyshev distances [52,
53] is proposed. In this the picking requests (i.e., the amount of or-
where t jin and t jout are the travel time from generic location j derlines belonging to an input orderlist, which represents the mis-
to the input and output stations respectively; and all products sion assigned to an AS/R vehicle) are rearranged within the or-
are classified on non-increasing demand per reserved loca- derlist (TSPmission algorithm) or within pools of orderlines which
tion. The aim is to prevent the generic unit-loads from being saturate the vehicle capacity (TSPtrip algorithm). In other words,
assigned to locations designated for faster moving products. the generic mission is composed of different trips within the stor-
• Randomized storage. It allows products to be stored any- age area according to the finite capacity of the picking vehicle:
where in the storage area. the rearrangement of locations to be visited is applied to the entire
• Duration of stay storage. This is a rule for randomized sys- mission (TSPmission ) or to each vehicle trip (TSPtrip ). In the latter
tems and is based on the duration of stay. condition, TSPtrip is applied many times within the same mission.
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The hypothesis is that a set of picking missions, generated ran- age commits y% of material movements. x is assumed to be
domly and according to a defined storage allocation policy, are equal to 20.
assigned to the generic AS/R truck. This total number of picking 3. CLASS (a/b/c). This factor deals with the physical dimen-
and stochastic requests, which generate random outputs and are sion of each class of storage item. The notation a/b/c and a,
assigned to one vehicle, is calculated in order to predict a picking b, c values indicate the portion of the total storage capacity
cycle time (the performance of the system) for a single mission (in percentage), which is associated with classes A, B and C
with a high level of acceptance (model validation). respectively. If (a, b, c) = (0.10, 0.25, 0.65), then 10% of the
most requested items belong to the first class of movement
(A), which is located very closed to the I/O area. Figure 1 ex-
5 Dynamic AS/RS model emplifies the distribution of items within the three classes for
a defined value of class factor.
This section presents the proposed dynamic model of an AS/RS 4. DIMORD. This is the number of lines of a picking list and
and concentrates on the multi-level factors which parameterize it is associated with a mission assigned to a retrieval vehicle.
the system. The product to picker OPS has been modeled by The generic picking vehicle begins and ends its mission at
the application of an object-oriented visual interactive simulation the I/O zone, when it reaches the end of the list. The picking
(VIS) tool [54]. This model involves more than 40 interrelated mission is made of several routes (trips) which begin and end
dynamic processes (e.g., initializing, ordering, batching, routing) at the I/O: every time the vehicle saturates its capacity it has
and 2000 functional entities (e.g., control points, loads, vehi- to reach the depot (I/O) area, unload the items collected dur-
cles, routes). Firstly, by the analysis of real warehousing systems ing the current trip and continue the mission by initializing
based on picking activity the most significant parameters have a new trip.
been collected in order to define the list of principal factors 5. CAPACITY. This factor relates to the capacity of the pick-
which could affect the response of an AS/RS. These factors are ing machine and to the average number of items picked at
the object of the system parameterization process. This set of each stop during a vehicle trip. In particular, it represents the
factors is composed of the following: average number of stops per route (i.e., trip).
1. AREA (A). This is related to the storage capacity of the 6. SHAPE (p&q). This factor is the ratio between the length and
warehousing system and is proportional to the number of lo- the height of the generic rack (see Fig. 1).
cations capable of receiving picking items. 7. K . This is the ratio between the length ( p
) and the height (q
)
2. CURVE (y). The class based storage location assignment of the area dedicated to class A in accordance with a rectan-
policy is adopted and is based on three classes (A, B and C). gular shape. This value can differ from the ratio p/q (shape
The generic class is identified by different COI values, ac- factor). B and C classes’ configuration is L-Shape (Fig. 1).
cording to a COI – Pareto ABC curve that is related to phys-
ical stocks and movement frequencies. The notation x/y, The previously described batching procedures were tested in
attributed to this factor, indicates that x% of cumulated stor- order to quantify the effect of the rearrangement of the pick-

Fig. 1. Automated storage and retrieval

system with class based storage alloca-
tion. Classes A, B, C
770

ing requests on the response of the system, i.e., the normalized picking cycle time, T _Normal). Moreover, thanks to the collec-
picking cycle time (T _Normal). T _Normal is the response of tion of a large portfolio of simulation results, the simulation steps
the system recorded during the what-if analysis and is defined as and accompanying statistical analysis provide several OPS de-
the ratio between the generic picking cycle time and the worst sign guidelines for the choice of the best picking strategies (free
(i.e., the longest) cycle time obtained by the same system con- parameters) given a subset of system constraints (unfree param-
figuration but using a random allocation of products. In fact, the eters). The collected output of every simulation run is the global
what-if analysis demonstrates that the greatest values of picking picking cycle time for a set of more than 1000 stops (orderlines)
cycle time are the result of a non-application of the class based belonging to different trips and picking cycles. All of the prin-
storage policy (i.e., c = random in Eq. 3). The T _Normal value cipal results are presented in Fig. 2 (plot of main effects) where
is defined according to the following: the picking cycle time (i.e., travel distance in agreement with
the definition introduced in Sect. 2.1) is normalized in compar-
T _NormalArea= A (c, l, s, r, d, k) ison with the cycle time based on a random storage policy. In
CTime(c, l, s, r, d, k/a = A) this graph the data means of T _Normal (the normalized cycle
= ≤1 (2)
max {CTime(c, l, s, r, d, k)i /a = A} time) are a measure of the system performance: the average re-
i sponse of the system is seen when each of the free-parameter
max {CTime(c, l, s, r, d, k/a = A)} (AREA, RATIO, SHAPE, etc.) changes its value. The dashed
(c,l,s,r,d,k)
line identifies the mean value obtained from the total number of
= max {CTime(a = A, c = random, s, r = 1, d = 1, k)} (3) simulation runs. From this figure the importance of certain fac-
s,d,k
tors affecting the picking cycle time T _Normal, compared to the
where CTime(c, l, s, r, d, k) is the picking cycle time for the other factors, is emphasized. In particular, Fig. 2 demonstrates an
mission associated with the picking list; a = AREA value, insignificant influence of AREA factor on system performance;
c = CURVE value, l = CLASS value, s = SHAPE value, r = as a consequence, all results presented in this manuscript can
CAPACITY value, d = DIMORD value, k = K value. be generalized for a warehousing system with a generic storage
T _Normal is calculated for different storage capacities capacity.
(AREA value) and the relationship 2 offers the opportunity to The effect of each factor and each combination of factors
compare all values obtained in accordance with different sys- on the response of the system is measured more accurately by
tem configurations, storage capacities and operating scenarios. applying the design of experiment (DOE) analysis to the normal-
This response value is capable of measuring the impact of differ- ized response time of the modeled part to picker OPS. The DOE
ent policies and factor values (e.g., class dimensions, COI-curve, analysis is a two-level factorial analysis (i.e., the effect of each
number of picks per picking list, vehicle capacity) on the system factor is measured according to two levels) which is based on the
performance. following statistical model [55]:




Y = α+ βi X i + βij X i X j + βijk X i X j X k + . . . + u
6 Results and factorial analysis i i, j i, j,k
i< j i< j<k
(4)
A multi-level factorial analysis was conducted in order to meas-
ure the impact of each factor and combinations of factors on the where Y is the response of the system, α is a fixed parameter, X i
throughput capacity of the system (i.e., the inverse of the mean is the value assumed by the factor i, βi is a multiplying parameter

Fig. 2. Plot of main effects on

normalized picking cycle time
(T _Normal)
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associated with factor i and is a measure of the effect of i on the Table 1. Factorial analysis. Factors’ levels
response Y (similarly for βij , βijk , etc.) and u is the error on the
expected response of the system. Factor AS/R - OPS levels
In particular, the effect of a factor (e.g., CLASS, CAP-
AREA A, A/2
ACITY) or a combination of factors (e.g., CLASS*CAPACITY, DIMORD 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30
CLASS*CAPACITY*CURVE) on Y is quantified by the fol- CAPACITY [1, 3, 5, . . . , 31]
lowing standardized effect (defined for the factor i in Eq. 5) in SHAPE ( p/q) 1&1, 2&1, 4&1, 8&1
accordance with a t-Student distribution of values: CURVE (x/y) 50/20, 60/20, 70/20, 80/20, 90/20, 95/20
CLASSES (A/B/C) 5/40/55, 10/50/30, 20/30/50, 20/50/30
β̂i − βo K 0.3, 1.7, 3.5
t= (5)
V(β̂i )
value of K (equal to 1.7) and AREA (according to the demon-
where β̂i and β0 are respectively the expected value and the mean stration of its non-influence). This classification is obtained by
value of βi , and V(β̂i ) is the variance of βi . A standardized effect analyzing several different two-level factorial studies; the values
defined for a generic combination of factors can be introduced of t, expression 5, have been collected and cumulated.
in the same way. Hypothesis testing is conducted on the value Figure 3a shows the mean value of t (standardize cumulated
of β0 according to both the t-Student distribution of t, and the value) calculated in agreement with the following expression:
following null hypothesis:

Std_ti = ti, j (8)
H: β0 = 0 . (6) i, j

If t (Eq. 5) is a great value the influence of the related factor i where

(or combination of factors) on the system’s response becomes i identifies a factor or a combination of factors,
critical. This 2k factorial analysis is the basis for a multi-level j identifies a factorial study (i.e., an operating scenario),
n ki factorial analysis where n i is the number of levels assumed ti, j is calculated in accordance with Eq. 5.
by factor i: a large number of two-level factorial analyses were
conducted for different couples of levels belonging to the values An absolute standardized cumulated value for each factor and
reported in Table 1. combination of factors, collected by Fig. 3b, is introduced in ac-
The total amount of two-level factorial analyses on the whole cordance with the following expression:
portfolio of simulated scenarios (on values of Table 1) is:
 
Std_ti, ABS = ti, j  . (9)
 n i   
2
 
6
 
16
 
4
i, j
= × × ×
2 2 2 2 2 Figure 3a and b shows that CURVE is the most critical factor;
i
i=AREA
  i=DIMORD
  i=CAPACITY
  i=SHAPE followed by CAPACITY. Then the third critical factor in terms of
6 4 3 cumulated effects is DIMORD, while SHAPE is the third critical
× × × = 291600 . (7)
2 2 2 factor in terms of the measure of the absolute cumulated effect
i=CURVE i=CLASSES i=k
(i.e., in accordance with the absolute value of t).
Figure 3 present two final classifications of factors, and combi- Figure 4 presents the simulated picking cycle times values
nations of factors, which affect the system’s response for a fixed obtained by the application of different batching procedures

Fig. 3. (a,b) Pareto analysis of cumulative standardized and absolute cumulative standardized factor effects
772

Fig. 4. TSPtrip algorithm and batch procedures’ evaluation

Fig. 5. TSPtrip algorithm and class based storage policy

(batch x, batch y, batch xy and TSP) when the dimension of where vx and v y are the velocity of the AS/R vehicle along x
the pickinglist (i.e., DIMORD value) is 30. In particular routines and y (as defined in Fig. 1); (x, y)i is the location of slot i.
batch x and batch y rearrange the picking requests in accordance Batch xy rearrangement is based on the following Chebyshev
with a non-decreasing value of the following times calculated distance:
from I/O point:    
 xi   yi 
max   ,   . (12)
x vx v y
(10)
vx The effect of the batching rearrangement in terms of T _Normal
y reduction is not great, especially when the class based policy is
(11)
vy not applied (Fig. 5).
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