automated robotic mobile fulfillment systems

Project: Practical Project

Project participants

Description

Due to the increasingly fast-paced economy, an efficient distribution center plays a crucial role in the supply chain. From the logistics perspective the main task is to turn homogeneous pallets into ready-to-ship packages that will be sent to the customer. Traditionally, as some customers' orders are received, pickers in different zones of a warehouse are sent to fetch the products, which are parts of several different customers' orders. After that, the products should be sorted and scanned. Once all parts of an order are complete, they are sent to packing workers to pack as packages. Such system is called manual order picking system. However, 50% of pickers' time in such system is spent on traveling around the warehouse. To ensure that the orders are shipped as fast as possible, automated storage and retrieval systems are used. Using such systems offers a certain degree of high throughput, but only for specialized and uniform products, such as books. Several drawbacks exist in these systems, such as high costs, long design cycles, inflexibility and lack of expandability. In order to improve or eliminate those disadvantages, automated robotic mobile fulfillment systems (RMFS), such as the Kiva System, have been introduced as an alternative order picking system in recent years. Robots are sent to carry storage units from the inventory and bring them to human operators, who work at picking stations. At the stations, the items are packed according to the customers' orders. This system are proved to increase the productivity two to three times, compared with the classic manual order picking system. Moreover, the search and travel tasks for the pickers are eliminated.
AcronymRMFS
StatusActive
Period01.01.17 → …

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Research outputs