Retrieval request scheduling in a shuttle-based storage and retrieval system with two lifts

Ran Chen, Jingjing Yang, Yugang Yu and Xiaolong Guo

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2023, vol. 174, issue C

Abstract: We study a shuttle-based storage and retrieval system with two independent lifts shared in a single mast. In such a system, two lifts move simultaneously but cannot pass each other, and each retrieval request is finished with the cooperation of a lift and a shuttle. Therefore, given a set of retrieval requests, the retrieval request scheduling problem consists of determining the sequence in which the requests are retrieved and assigning each request to a lift with the objective of minimizing the makespan, considering both the lift-lift interaction and lift-shuttle interaction. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer programming model and proved to be NP-hard. We propose a decomposition-based adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic to quickly compute near-optimal solutions, using the property that the assignment of requests to lifts for a given retrieval sequence can be exactly solved in polynomial time by a dynamic programming approach. Numerical results indicate that our algorithm achieves a lower makespan than the methods proposed in the literature and used in practice. We also apply the proposed algorithm using real data to a realistic setting that considers multiple planning horizons, showing that it significantly outperforms the policy the company currently uses.

Keywords: Warehouses; Retrieval scheduling; Shuttle-based storage and retrieval system; Adaptive large neighborhood search; Dynamic programming; Performance analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2023.103117

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