Introducing an AGV System into the Warehouse and Optimizing Product Placement for Efficient Operation

In recent years, more and more companies have introduced an automated guided vehicle (AGV) to their distribution warehouses in order to improve the efficiency of their operations. Nevertheless, simply installing the AGV will not maximize the effectiveness of its use. If drop-off points are to be multiplied, the product placement should be changed to make effective use of them. Therefore, we propose storage assignment method that enables more efficient operation of the AGV than simply installing it into the current product layout. The product placement is optimized by PSO, and class-based storage is given as a hint to search for a placement that enables AGVs to operate efficiently. The performance of the proposed method is verified by simulation experiments using real data. The experimental results were evaluated by the distance traveled for picking (picking cost), and the proposed method reduced the picking cost by 23.75% compared to the situation without the AGV in the currrent layout by simulation experiment. In addition, the proposed method succeeded in searching for superior placement with less picking cost than simply introducing the AGV to the current product layout.