Article ID: | iaor200969168 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 56 |
Issue: | 5 |
Start Page Number: | 389 |
End Page Number: | 403 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2009 |
Journal: | Naval Research Logistics |
Authors: | Pohl Letitia M, Meller Russell D, Gue Kevin R |
Keywords: | warehouse design |
Unit-load warehouses store and retrieve unit-loads, typically pallets. When storage and retrieval operations are not coordinated, travel is from a pickup and deposit (P&D) point to a pallet location and back again. In some facilities, workers interleave storage and retrieval operations to form a dual-command cycle. Two new aisle designs proposed by Gue and Meller (2006) use diagonal aisles to reduce the travel distance to a single pallet location by approximately 10 and 20[percnt] for the two designs, respectively. We develop analytical expressions for travel between pallet locations for one of these‐the fishbone design. We then compare fishbone warehouses that have been optimized for dual-command to traditional warehouses that have been optimized in the same manner, and show that an optimal fishbone design reduces dual-command travel by 10-15%.