Lagrangian formulation for energy-efficient warehouse design

Abstract

Energy consumption in modern warehouses is today an important issue which has not received much attention in the scientific community. In this paper it is addressed the problem of warehouse design considering the energy costs incurred by vehicles and equipment in a fully or partially automated facility. Closed-form solutions are obtained by a formulating the Lagrangian of an operational cost function with equality constraints. The contribution of the paper is to develop formulas for reduced energy consumption and pollution, both relevant aspects in sustainable engineering systems. An example applied to a distributor of MRO items is presented. In this version the energy cost is integrated into the formula, modifying the method presented in [1].a