Warehouse Simulation Through Model Configuration

conference paper
The pre-build development of warehouse systems leads from a specific customer request to a specific customer quotation. This involves a process of configuring a warehouse system using a sequence of steps that contain increasingly more details. Simulation is a helpful tool in analyzing warehouse design alternatives, but setting up a detailed simulation is too expensive early in the development process. We show that configurable simulation models can be applied early in the development process with a good cost/benefit ratio. We present a warehouse simulation model that can be configured with customer and topology information and decision algorithms. We show that the simulation results are similar to those of detailed simulations while a warehouse simulation can be configured with little effort and the simulations run fast enough to support sensitivity analysis and design-space exploration.
TNO Identifier
472437
ISBN
978-0-9564944-6-7
Publisher
European Council on Modelling and Simulation ECMS
Source title
27th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation, ECMS 2013, 27-30 May 2013, Alesund, Norway
Editor(s)
Bye, R.T.
Houxiang Zhang, H.
Place of publication
Nothingham, UK