Technology selection for e-commerce order pick process

Abstract

Automation of warehouse supply chain plays an important role in quick delivery of goods. This project involves the study of various technologies around the world for automation of warehouses and the designing a robot based system similar to Auto Store. In India, Grey Orange is the market leader in the warehouse automation market. It has three products –Profier, Sorter and Butler. These robots help the companies get quicker deliveries and minimal errors. Internationally, Auto Store and Swisslog are major players in the industry. Auto Store is a cube-based system, rather than shelf-based warehouses in India. It turns the wasteful area of shelve-based system into storage space and increases the inventory capacity by using all space for warehousing. The goods are stored in plastic Bins inside an aluminum Grid. Radio controlled robots are the actual workforce in this system, and move on tracks above the cube.Considering the implementation of Auto Store system in India, we have designed three algorithms that can be used for the movement of robots over the grid, such that the robots do not block each other. After planning the movement of robots, the trade-off between bin density in the warehouse stacks and the time taken by robot to pick a bin is found through a simulation process. This provides the optimal level of bin density and the number of robots to be kept in a warehouse