1. Back-of-the-Envelope Miniload Throughput Bounds and Approximations.
- Author
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FOLEY, ROBERTD., HACKMAN, STEVENT., and PARK, BYUNGCHUN
- Subjects
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INFORMATION storage & retrieval systems , *UTILIZATION of industrial equipment , *APPROXIMATION theory , *CONFIGURATION management , *PRODUCTION management (Manufacturing) , *MATHEMATICAL formulas - Abstract
We derive simple formulas bounding and approximating the throughput of an end-of-aisle miniload system with exponentially distributed pick times and either uniform or turnover-based storage. For typical configurations, the worst-case relative error for the bounds is less than 4%. We use our bounds to show that, for all practical purposes, regardless of the configuration, the picker utilization determines the storage/retrieval machine utilization, and vice versa. Thus, a system designer cannot hope to independently achieve separate goals for the utilization rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
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