Scheduling optimization of tier-captive four-way shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems with multiple lifts

Abstract

The four-way shuttle-based storage and retrieval system (FSS/RS) handles retrieval transactions through shuttles moving horizontally in four directions and lifts moving vertically. The scheduling process and working route of both are important problems for daily operations. This article constructs a scheduling model for the tier-captive FSS/RS with multiple lifts and designs a two-stage optimization heuristic algorithm (OHA). A heuristic assignment algorithm is proposed to determine the retrieval request sequence, and the route-generation stage adopts an improved A-star algorithm with a multi-phase conflict avoidance method to generate shuttle conflict-free routes. Simulation results demonstrate that OHA can reliably generate high-quality solutions, with a low degree of fluctuation in the results, not exceeding 0.5%. The proposed scheduling method outperforms its competitors in all instances, reducing the makespan by 8%. Moreover, the evidence shows that the proposed method can obtain the most competitive scheduling scheme in FSS/RS with more shuttles and lifts.

KEYWORDS:

• Autonomous vehicle storage and retrieval system
• multi-lifts
• retrieval request scheduling
• two-stage hybrid algorithm
• conflict-free route

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Data will be available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Zhejiang Science and Technology Plan Project [grant number 2018C01003].