Figure 2 shows an example of the simulation’s visualization. It shows a Zone Picking System (ZPS). ZPS is a man-to-goods warehouse concept where storage is organized in zones. To fulfill orders, totes visit a number of zones where operators take items from the zones’ local storage and put them in the totes.
ZPS is one of the pre-defined templates of our simulator; the system in Figure 2 was created by
specifying the number of aisles, the number of zones per aisle, the zones’ buffer lengths, and several other ZPS-specific parameters.
Figure 2: Zone Picking System (ZPS) simulation
4 COMPACT PICKING SYSTEM
In this section, we will demonstrate the application of our simulation concept to an existing retail warehouse. Figure 3 shows a schematic of this warehouse. It is a so-called Compact Picking System (CPS). The system consists of three main components: five miniload storage aisles, a main conveyor loop, and three picking workstations.
Figure 3: Compact Picking System (CPS)
4.1 Miniloads