Optimising forklift activities in wide-aisle reference warehouse

Abstract

Nowadays the great attention has to be paid to warehouse. Theoretical analysis shows the need to optimise their activities. This encourages the search of more advanced solutions. Aiming to determine possible improvements, the operations of forklifts are examined in warehouses, and detail solutions are presented. For empirical study author created a simulation model and tested different scenarios. First of all, author examined the new routing method and suggested programming algorithm for forklift route optimization. In the first part of the study possible improvements for put-away activity are analysed, in the second part – improvements for replenishment activity are overviewed. Simulation results showed that the reduction of forklift travel distance is equal from 11.1 % to 35.6 %. Finally, the study ends with detail suggestions: author presented new routing method and forklift routing algorithm. Further, the theoretical results have to be tested in practise.