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 WAREHOUSE AND MANUFACTURING LOGISTICS DESIGN USING A
DATA-DRIVEN GENERIC MODEL GENERATOR
José A. Basto
António C. Brito
Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Engenharia, Departamento de Engenharia Mecânica e Gestão Industrial
Rua Dr. Roberto Frias; P-4200-465 PORTO; PORTUGAL
E-mail: jbbasto@fe.up.pt , acbrito@fe.up.pt
KEYWORDS
Simulation, Modelling, Warehouse, Manufacturing
ABSTRACT
The nature of warehouse design requires the
manipulation of large amounts of data and is often an
iterative process that forces the designer to go through
the different design phases several times before
reaching the final solution. This suggests an integrated
computer environment that can give support to the user
during all the design phases.
The need for a flexible tool, easier to use, lead to the
development of a Decision Support System: AWARD
(Advanced WARehouse Design).
This paper presents further developments of the DSS
and shows a successful example of application of the
new functionalities: a simulation model of a full
automated warehouse developed for EFACEC, a large
Portuguese company in the warehouse design, building
and consultancy business.
INTRODUCTION
In 1976 the concept of Visual Interactive Simulation
(VIS) was introduced by Hurrion (Hurrion 1976). With
VIS a image of the model running is displayed on the
screen and the user can interrupt the model running, at
any time, and interact with it in a way that he can
influence the future behaviour of the model.
Visual Interactive Simulation aggregates a set of
graphics, visual and interactive techniques which can be
incorporated with different levels of extension in a
simulation system. In the past years, there have been a
large number of situations where VIS was successfully
applied to different areas, including warehousing
(Dangelmaier and Bachers 1986), (Marín et al. 1998),
(Feliz-Teixeira and Brito 1999) and (Burnett and
LeBaron 2001).
Physical locations and travel distances are crucial in
warehouse modelling. The warehouse layout is a key
factor in the success of the system. When developing
warehouse models the spatial factor is essential for a
good representation of the real system. A warehousing
simulation system using the Data-driven Generic Model
approach should then have the following characteristics:
- a user friendly interface using warehouse
terminology;
- an effective way of defining the physical layout
in order to enable the model of movement with
the required level of accuracy;
- simulation elements which allow a correct
modelling of warehouse logic.
These needs lead to AWARD (Advanced WARehouse
Design), a Decision Support System for warehouse
design and management. The model uses the SIMVIS
libraries and utilities described in (Bastos and Moreira
da Silva 1985).
This simulation library was written at the Management
Group (GEIN) of the Mechanical Engineering and
Industrial Management Department (DEMEGI) of the
Faculty of Engineering - Porto University - Portugal.
The programming language used was FORTRAN and
later C++. The library is based on the simulation event
approach. AWARD development has been user oriented
and incorporates the experience and background
discussed above, as described in (Brito and Basto 1992).
Although SIMVIS was used to build simulation models,
its main objective was the development of Data-Driven
Generic Models. The SIMVIS author's strategy was to
conceive a system with the basic tools necessary to
support the development of model generators for
specific domains. With the Data-Driven Generic Models
the user can build models with a friendly interface using
a dialogue that he can understand and without a great
need of simulation expertise. A set of support libraries
were also developed, at GEIN, to allow the software to
be easily ported to other operating systems or be
adapted to work with different graphics terminals. This
was achieved by building separate libraries for the low
level I/O and graphics modules, that are device and/or
operating system dependent, and for the high level I/O
and simulation modules, that are device and operating
system independent. Each simulation model is defined
by programming the events and all the user interaction
and graphics display animation.
The model structure is composed of three modules. The warehouse - truck are now more complex. Processes
configuration module (CONFIG) allows the definition that where scheduled and done in a single moment, must
of the coordinates, the number of aisles and the number now be considered in two phases, involving careful
of racking levels. In the IDUMP module the user is synchronization and verification of conditions of space
asked to define the start date and time and the duration availability.
of the simulation. Next it generates the internal
simulation model structure. The simulation module The role of entity PALLET, acquired a new importance,
allows the running of any previously defined because it is now responsible for the trigger of
configuration. intermediate events, as for example, “ENTER IN
GROUPING”. Entity PALLET is updated during its
traveling in the warehouse, in particular the attribute
AWARD DSS EXTENSIONS
that identifies the operation in which this entity is
Grouping and Marshaling involved and the attributes that keep the pointers for
origin and destination in each phase of the transfer.
The need to extend the array of the models generated by
AWARD DSS to simulate the grouping of deliveries to Boxes picking for new type of “mixed pallets” add a
the warehouse and the marshaling for expedition orders, bigger information load for the transfer process, in
lead to extend functionalities to the DSS.
which the trips to the racks with picking cells can be as
many as the boxes that are part of this special pallet. We
In the case of the operation of grouping, full pallets opted to create an additional entity, MIXED PALLET, to
accumulated in the corresponding zones. For
deal exclusively with this new process.
marshaling, pallets accumulated there may be simple
(single product) or mixed (boxes of different products,
picked for a specific customer). The goal of these Pick-up and delivery transfer stations
operations is to diminish the global load (or unload)
To increase the efficiency of a warehouse, we may use
times of the trailers, what is obtained at a cost: the
transporters who have the capacity to operate in aisles
reduction of the useful area of the warehouse and the
of reduced width (narrow-aisle storage/retrieval truck or
increase of the number of handlings. The rewards
automated storage/retrieval system) and racks of much
achieved by the extra operation of marshaling are
bigger height (denser storage) than those that are
particularly relevant in the case of warehouses designed
possible to operate using conventional forklift trucks.
for the supply of products in units of boxes, not full
pallets. In this scenario, being able to pick-up and
These types of transporters suffer, however, of an
marshaling these boxes before the arrival of the
important limitation: in the generality of the cases, its
expedition truck is an important step to increase the
operation is limited to the aisle of access to the racks it
volume flow of expedition bay and the utilization rate of
is dedicated. Due to this restriction, it became necessary
the truck.
to create interface points (from now on named
TRANSFER STATIONS) between this constrained
The grouping of deliveries allows the reduction of the
equipment and conventional material handling
unloading times of the trucks that dock to the reception
equipment with flexible access to the warehouse.
bays and enable the execution of parallel tasks that
frequently occur, such as the verification of incoming
This new resource is basically a special type of rack that
supplies and its initial quality control.
functions as a "buffer", where all pallets that are
directed to or come from a rack served by a dedicated
We may create more than one zone of the above cited
transporter must stop. Not representing useful volume of
types, allowing to model diverse situations that include
storage, the stations must be as small as possible, what
grouping and marshaling zones with different physical
leads to an increase of the complexity of the
locations or different types of racks.
mechanisms that deal with the problem of pallets
position reserve and “locking”, the scheduling of events
The new information concerning the grouping of
to unblock tasks dependent on the availability of free
incoming pallets must be added to the products data file
positions in stations and the proper transference
One of its fields indicates the name of the grouping
between different stations.
intermediate storage zone. If this data field is blank,
none of the products of this family will stop at this zone.
We choose the storage rack that will have pick-up and
Otherwise, the products that belong to the specified
delivery stations, eliminating the hypothesis of it being
family stay in the grouping zone during a minimum
already a station. Then the racks that will work as
holding time that is also defined in the same file. The
transfer stations are pointed, allowing that the same rack
data format for the operation of marshaling is similar to
assumes the two roles. The relation storage rack -
the one just described for the grouping storage.
transfer station is univocal: one given rack can only
have one station of each type, while one station may
With the new operations of grouping and marshaling,
serve multiple storage racks.
the transfer mechanisms truck - warehouse and
 PICK-UP STATION DELIVERY STATION
OUT
MARSHALING ZONE
BOXES PICKING RACKS
Figure 1: Warehouse Transfers using Pick-up and Delivery stations
This correspondence between racks led to an increase of
the structure of data “racks”, at the CONFIG program,
where the routines of creation, elimination or repetition
of racks have now to contemplate the new transfer
stations.
The IDUMP program was expanded with the creation of
the new entity TRANSFER STATION, with new queues
of free and busy cells (for exit and/or entrance,
depending on the characteristics of each station) and the
extension of the set of attributes of the rack to keep the
pointers for its eventual transfer stations. The possible
transfers inside the warehouse are presented in Figure 1.
In the beginning of the process of handling a pallet to its
position of destination, is verified if the “target” rack
has assigned a delivery station. If this condition applies,
a sub-routine gets a pointer to a free position in the
transfer “buffer”, being this cell immediately locked for
the transit of entity PALLET that triggered the event. In
the absence of a free position, the PALLET is blocked
until a cell in the station is freed.
The transfer of pallets through exit stations involves
problems related with the existence of free positions in
the marshaling zone (in the eventuality of the routing
includes this zone): it does not justify the locking of a
position in an pick-up station if it is forecasted that this
resource (in general, scarce) will be blocked until
becoming vacant a needed downstream position.
Therefore, it was decided to never reserve a cell at
stations without before-hand make sure that all the
remaining passage points are available.
This priority of keeping the stations as available as
possible was also included in the new logic of the
restocking task of “boxes picking points”. If the trip
includes a short stop at the exit station of the storage
rack (full pallets) and another stop at the station of
entrance to the rack of boxes picking, this task will only
reserve position in the stations when it will be possible
to lock simultaneously the cells in the two midway
buffers.
IN
GROUPING ZONE
The task of boxes picking raises the biggest problem in
the reserve of position in input/output stations, because
this case may be much more than a single trip from a
rack to a truck (or vice versa), always in the same flow
direction. The order of boxes may have multiple
delivery points, located in dispersed racks of the
warehouse, what may lead to the situation that is
represented in Figure 2, in which the single cell stations
serve both functions (this is a worst case scenario).
The procedure to perform includes the following steps:
(i) In the arrival of a pallet to the transfer station I
(see Figure 2), the pointer for the delivery cell of boxes
“1” is obtained from the picking list; Next, it verifies if
the rack to which this delivery point belongs is assigned
(or not) an input transfer station. In the affirmative case,
it is verified if it exists a free position in this station. If
this condition is also met, we will be in conditions to
initiate next check (before trip “A” starts);
(ii) Still in the transfer station I, verifies if the
station II is also an exit station. If affirmative, the task
of “boxes picking” immediately reserves the same
position in station II as exit and entry point, anticipating
the return of pallet to the station II (trip “B”, in figure 2)
BOXES PICKING RACKS
1
B
I II
A
PICK-UP/DELIVERY STATION
Figure 2: Warehouse Transfers using Pick-up and
Delivery Stations
The underlying motive to this procedure is to prevent
that a mixed pallet is blocked in an aisle. The
subdivision of the task “boxes picking” still compels
numerous tests of accessibility of the transporters to the
various points where the routing takes the pallet, in
contrast to the procedure followed by the first version of
system AWARD, in which the same transporter were in
charge to fulfil the order “boxes picking” from start to
finish.
Manufacturing Logistics and AS/RS
EFACEC entered a new bid for building an automatic
warehouse designed to supply raw material to machines
integrated in a large production system. These
functionalities required new options to be added to the
simulator AWARD, not yet prepared to model
manufacturing logistics systems with Automated
Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS).
On input data side, it was necessary to create a new data
structure to describe the operations of each machine.
The new files (one for each machine) include the
information of the operations to be executed in the
machine, namely: the codes of the necessary raw
materials, the amounts to be used; set-up and processing
times for each operation.
It was also needed to widen the logic of the warehouse
zones, in order to define zones of direct supplying to
machines and buffers for empty pallets.
Given that the EFACEC is specialized in the conception
and production of automatic warehouses, aiming dense
storage in warehouses and distribution centres, it
became imperative to increase the range of types of
available transporters in order to include the
AUTOMATIC TRANSPORTERS (robots destined to the
transport of pallets from/to the racks). By technical
restrictions (in general this equipment moves on a rail
track, being held in place by a guide in form of “T” on
the top track), this AS/RS is always constrained to linear
movements, keeping its orientation during all the
simulation.
This new transporter graphical representation reflects its
special shape and the double platform, if it is equipped
to perform a dual cycle on a single trip (for example,
picking up an empty pallet from a machine supply bay
and deliver a full one). The coding of this logic proved
crucial to achieve the operational level needed to
manage hard industrial problems, like the one presented
as an example in the next section. Finally, the multiple
new events to model this production environment were
created in the generator IDUMP.
The production machines to be supplied originated the
new entity MACHINE. The attributes of this entity keep
the information for its functioning, as pointers for the
supplying stations, raw materials to be used, timing of
the events related to the operations, etc, keeping also the
statistics of the times in each one of its possible states,
indicated at the icon of the machine by a small colored
flag:
(i) SETUP: Preparation of the machine (blue flag)
(ii) OPERATION: Processing of the materials in the
machine (green flag);
(iii) STARVING: the machine stops by lack of raw
material (red flag);
(iv) REQUEST: the machine send to the central
controller a supplying order (yellow flag).
REQUEST may coexist with state (SETUP) or with
state (OPERATION), preceding always state
(STARVING)
INDUSTRIAL APLICATION EXAMPLE
The new functionalities of system AWARD were used
for the simulation of an automatic warehouse designed
by EFACEC for a component supplier in the
competitive automotive industry.
The problem required the supply of raw materials to 38
machines. The layout is presented in Figure 3, a screen
shoot of the full model, in which we can see the storage
racks, with seven levels, in two sections, each served by
an automatic transporter.
Figure 3: Initial Situation of Manufacturing Layout
The raw material pallets arrive in the factory by a
receiving bay located to the left of the racks, where also
are located the zones of accumulation of empty pallets.
The supplying of the machines is done through the cells
of the first level of the racks, having each machine three
supply stations. A small “translation” software program
was prepared for importing data from a master
production plan (supplied from real data by the final
customer of EFACEC). It creates the list of shop orders
for each machine, in accordance with the file structure
defined in the AWARD system.
The main measurement to get from the simulation is the
share of the time at STARVING state of the machines,
as well as statistics of utilization of transporters and
material flow.
Results
The studied scenarios were based at the above detailed
physical implantation, modelled to scale of the actual
 layout, using as control parameters the initial fill level
of the warehouse and the dispatching priorities assigned
to the automatic transporters, that where fitted with the
“double platform” to permit dual cycle after preliminary
runs indicated material flow problems.
It was decided to test a “worst case scenario” to obtain a
“lower bound” result. Thus, the simulated warehouse
had just a minimum reserve stock and its operation
priority was given to the raw material reception.
In this boundary situation, where it is necessary to
supply all the 38 machines almost simultaneously,
taking care in the first place of the input of pallets into
the warehouse, a few starvation situations occurred
during a transient period of about two hours. (See
Figure 4, taken 25 minutes after the beginning of the
simulation, with a “red flag”). After this provoked crisis
fades away, no more supply rupture happens, barely
changing final statistics of the simulation.
Figure 4: STARVING Machine being Supplied.
In more normal starting conditions, with an initial fill
level of the warehouse as low as 10%, and even keeping
the same unreasonable priority of the tasks, not a single
machine reached STARVATION status, what
demonstrates that the planned material handling
equipments had spare capacity to meet the load
forecasted for the manufacturing logistics system.
Suggestions where made to use SMED methodology to
reduce machines setup time, the real hurdle in the
factory performance.
CONCLUSIONS
The AWARD model generator and simulation system
proved to be a powerful tool to the design and testing of
warehouses, enabling managers and engineers that are
not experts in the field of simulation to obtain results in
a couple of days (instead of months of hard coding by
experienced simulators and programmers) to big
industrial challenges.
The new described functionalities widen the
applicability of system AWARD, adding essential
resources to the automatic equipment simulation of
materials handling and allowing industrial needs for
warehouse zones and transfer stations to be easily
included in the models.
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The creation of the new logic destined to the problem of
manufacturing logistics enabled AWARD to accurately
simulate with easy modeling automatic warehouses
(with new AS/RS transporters) in production facilities.
As a marketing tool for EFACEC, this model generator
with faithful display, proved to be a successful
competitive leverage to win commercial bids.
REFERENCES
Bastos, J. M. and C. Moreira da Silva. 1985 “SIMVIS: A
Visual Interactive General Purpose Simulation
System”, Progress Report nº 2, Universidade do Porto,
Faculdade de Engenharia, Departamento de
Engenharia Mecânica, Portugal.
Brito, A. C. and J. A. Basto. 1992, “The Use of Computer
Aided Design Techniques in Configuring Visual
Interactive Simulation Models for Warehouse
Design”, Revue des Systèmes de Décision, v 1 , n 2-3,
p 191 - 212
Burnett, D. and T. LeBaron, 2001, “Efficiently modeling
warehouse systems” in Proceedings of the 2001
Winter Simulation Conference (Arlington, VA, Dec 9-
12), IEEE, Picataway, NJ, p 1001-1006
Dangelmaier, W. and R. Bachers, 1986 "SIMULAP - A
Simulation System For Material Flow and Warehouse
Design", Material Flow, n 3, p 207-214.
Feliz-Teixeira, J.M., A.C. Brito. 1999, “Visual C++ Software
for Warehouse Simulation”. In Proceedings of the 11th
European Simulation Symposium (Erlangen, Oct 24-
27), Germany, p 181-186.
Hurrion, R., "The Design, Use and Requirements of an
Interactive Visual Computer Simulation Language to
Explore Production Planning Problems", Ph.D. thesis,
University of London, 1976.
Marín, R.M.; J. Garrido, J.L. Trillo, J. Saez, J. Armesto. 1998
“Design and simulation of an industrial automated
overhead warehouse” Integrated Manufacturing
Systems , v 9, n 5-6, p 308-313.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
JOSÉ A. BASTO , Porto (Portugal), 1963, went to
Universidade do Porto, where he studied mechanical
engineering and obtained his degree in 1986, staying in
the same institution as Lecturer. He obtained his Ph.D.
in Industrial Engineering at the Industrial and Systems
Engineering Department, Lehigh University (U.S.A.) in
2001. He is Auxiliar Professor at Universidade do Porto
since 2001, where he leads research in the field of
Flexible Manufacturing. His e-mail address is:
jbbasto@fe.up.pt
ANTÓNIO C. BRITO , Porto, 1958, went to
Universidade do Porto, where he studied mechanical
engineering and obtained his degree in 1981, staying in
the same institution as Lecturer where he did his M.S.
thesis in 1985. He obtained his Ph.D. in Simulation
from the School of Management at the University of
Cranfield (U.K.) in 1993. He is Auxiliar Professor at
Universidade do Porto since 1993, where he leads
research in the field of Visual Interactive Simulation.
His e-mail address is: acbrito@fe.up.pt