Travel time modeling and analysis for an automated work-in-process carousel

This paper deals with an automated storage carousel which handles work-in-process (WIP) such as small parts for kitting. The system has been used predominantly for order picking applications. Throughput performance of the system can be measured by the inverse of the expected order picking time. Analytic models are developed for approximating the expected times under the ‘nearest-item’ sequencing rule. The performance of the models are tested through computer simulation. The gap between the two is shown to be reasonably small.