TY - THES ID - 134618613 TI - The influence of different design parameters on the throughput of an AVS/RS for E-commerce based on a modular simulation model AU - Goris, Brent AU - Waeyenbergh, Geert AU - Teck, Sander AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Industriële Ingenieurswetenschappen. Opleiding Master in de industriële wetenschappen. Elektromechanica (Leuven) PY - 2023 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Industriële Ingenieurswetenschappen DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:134618613 AB - In today’s booming e-commerce society, efficiency in warehousing is more important than ever. It is a critical consideration in order to meet the high demand and throughput variety to ensure customer satisfaction. Therefore, traditional human-based storage policies fall short. Hence, there is a need for more automated warehouse systems since they offer improved efficiency and adaptability in terms of throughput and scalability. One such system is AVS/RS, which consists of lifts that bring packages to the desired tier, and an autonomous shuttle places the packages in the correct spot of the destined aisle. Although this system has been studied in the past decade, there are still gaps in the literature that need to be addressed. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to fill these gaps by analysing the effect of different design parameters on the throughput of the system and developing a model where these effects can be measured. The experiments were performed using the simulation program Enterprise Dynamics. While some of these parameters have been studied in the literature, no relation has been found between them. This thesis confirms the literature about the individual effect of the parameters but also identifies a factor that unites all these parameters, namely the bottleneck of the system. The parameters that were studied in this thesis include the speed and acceleration of the lift and shuttles, the number of tiers, aisles, and bays in the warehouse, and the different storage policies. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is this study one of the first to study different storage policies of the lift and their effect on the throughput. The throughput, as an indicator of efficiency, and the idle times, as an indicator of the bottleneck, were used as measurement variables to evaluate the system. With all these parameters and their individual effect on the throughput, a regression model was developed that gives a mathematical formula to determine the throughput based on the given variables. While a formula was found for the parameters included in this study with the exception of the speeds and accelerations due to the limited simulation power. However, this model can be expanded to include more parameters, such as speed, acceleration, waiting times, and additional storage policies. With this, the complete system could be described by formula instead of simulation, which would save effort and time. To develop the regression model, a reference system is first made and then different parameters, such as the speeds, accelerations, and warehouse dimensions, are varied while the others are kept constant. This iterative process allowed us insights into the effects of each parameter. The results confirm that these parameters can improve throughput and that the amount of increase or decrease in throughput is affected by the position of the bottleneck in the system. The main contribution is the identification of the relationship between all the parameters and the bottleneck. Finally, the regression model showed that intelligent storage policies for the lift, could further remove the bottleneck and increase the efficiency of the system. Overall, this regression model can be used for further investigation and to provide warehouse managers with suggestions and insights to optimize their warehouse according to their needs. ER -