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ANALYTIC PROPERTIES OF TWO-CAROUSEL SYSTEMS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2012

Ruben Bossier
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Maria Vlasiou
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands and Eurandom, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Ivo Adan
Affiliation:
Eurandom, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlandsand Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Abstract

We present analytic results for warehouse systems involving pairs of carousels. Specifically, for various picking strategies, we show that the sojourn time of the picker satisfies an integral equation that is a contraction mapping. As a result, numerical approximations for performance measures such as the throughput of the system are extremely accurate and converge fast (e.g., within five iterations) to their real values. We present simulation results validating our results and examining more complicated strategies for pairs of carousels.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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