The travelling of forklifts in warehouses

Abstract

Around 75 % of warehouses retrieve products manually. In these warehouses forklifts are the most expensive machines. The study pays special attention to the travelling of these machines. In order to determine potential travel distance savings, a simulation model is created. The experiments demonstrate that the travel distance of forklifts can be reduced by 27-37 % when RF-based process is implemented comparing with travel distance when paper is used in the process. Research provided herein also defines how to optimize travelling by implementing multiple-tasks approach in WMS. The presented results show that the travel distance of forklifts can be also reduced by 9 % when multiple-tasks approach is used. In addition, it is identified, how stock accuracy affects the travel distance of forklifts. The correlation between the travel distance of forklifts and stock accuracy is presented herein.