Non-Traditional Layout Design for Robotic Mobile Fulfillment System with Multiple Workstations by Xiuqing Yang, Xinglu Liu, Lijuan Feng, Jianquan Zhang, Mingyao Qi

“…In addition, we investigate the near-optimal workstation location patterns (i.e., some general workstation configuration rules) in the context of both traditional and flying-V layouts. A series of experiments led to the following findings: (1) the flying-V layout can save 8∼26% of travel distance compared with the traditional layout, and the sacrifice of space use is only 2∼3% for medium or large warehouses; (2) instead of solving the optimization model, the proposed <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mn>2</mn><mi>n</mi></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> rule and <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mrow><mi>n</mi><mo>+</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></semantics></math></inline-formula> rule are simple and easily implemented ways to locate workstations, with travel distance gaps of less than 1.5% and 5% for traditional and flying-V layouts, respectively; and (3) the “optimal” cross-aisle angle (i.e., <inline-formula><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><semantics><mi>θ</mi></semantics></math></inline-formula>) in flying-V layout can be set as large as possible as long as the cross-aisle intersects the left or right edge of the warehouse.…”
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