Design of automated warehouse systems

The warehousing of inventories is an enormous expense to industries worldwide, and yet there are few tools available that can be used to design rack storage systems while considering overall system costs. The primary objective of this paper is the development of an overall warehouse storage system costs model to aid a warehouse planner in the design of automated warehouse systems. A simulation model and statistical estimation procedures are used to determine the maximum inventory levels accumulated in the receiving, storage, and shipping areas. The overall cost model is developed to determine the required total land, the initial investment fund, the number of pieces of handling equipment, and the storage rack configuration for the main storage area. A numerical example is then presented to demonstrate the application of the overall system cost model developed in this paper.