Abstract:
The growths in real estate sector and the increases of minimum wage in Thailand have transformed construction material business. To counter these issues, many retailers have recently adopted automated material handling equipment, called Miniload Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS), a set of industrial automated cranes operating within high-density storage racks and narrow aisles for totes. Equipped with guided conveyors for transfer totes, the AS/RS eliminates traveling of pickers by automatically transport selected products inside totes to workstations. As a result, the efficiency of system depends on operating policies as well as the business nature of a retailer. In this article, the business nature of a construction material retailer that has recently implemented a Miniload AS/RS was analyzed. The primary analysis showed that the inefficient utilization of totes causing by storage and retrieval policies. Another problem is Blocking of baskets on conveyors. Blocking problem makes the baskets remain on conveyors which causes unutilized picker. As a result, a simulation is selected to experiment with the effects of various configuration settings, such as order batching, storage assignment, retrieval sequencing and study factors that affect the baskets waiting time. The results of experiment suggest the most suitable settings of the system that increase cubic space utilization 4% and reduce travel time of automated cranes 48% compare with current operating policies. Including it reduce the baskets waiting time from 56.92 seconds to 43.59 seconds (23.42%) and average the utilization of the workstation to the same level.