A Hungarian-based Heuristic for Dual-command Storage/Retrieval in Single-machine Flow-rack AS/RS with Determined Locations

Abstract

The single-machine flow-rack (SMFR) automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) has high storage density, high utilization of floor space, low investment cost, and low operation cost. Based on the determined storage and retrieval locations, the generation of dual-command cycle (DC) operation in the SMFR AS/RS can be modeled as an assignment problem, which can be solved by the Hungarian method. Therefore, a novel heuristic, denoted as LSH (Less-Shelves Hungarian), modified from Hungarian is proposed in this paper to generate high performance DC operations in SMFR AS/RS with determined storage and retrieval locations. The aim of the proposing heuristic is to minimize the total travel time of storage and retrieval operations. Simulation experiments are executed to analyze and evaluate the performance of LSH. Experimental results verify that the proposed heuristic has better effectiveness and efficiency than existed heuristic for the same problem.