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The travel time in carousel systems under the nearest item heuristic

Part of: Operations research and management science Distribution theory - Probability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Nelly Litvak  and
Ivo Adan
Nelly Litvak*
Affiliation:
EURANDOM
Ivo Adan*
Affiliation:
Eindhoven University of Technology
*
∗ Postal address: EURANDOM, PO Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Email address: litvak@eurandom.tue.nl
∗∗ Postal address: Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
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Abstract

A carousel is an automated warehousing system consisting of a large number of drawers rotating in a closed loop. In this paper, we study the travel time needed to pick a list of items when the carousel operates under the nearest item heuristic. We find a closed form expression for the distribution and all moments of the travel time. We also analyse the asymptotic behaviour of the travel time when the number of items tends to infinity. All results follow from probabilistic arguments based on properties of uniform order statistics.

Keywords

order pickinguniform order statisticsspacingsmemory-less property

MSC classification

Primary: 60E99: None of the above, but in this section
Secondary: 90B99: None of the above, but in this section
Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Applied Probability , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 45 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © by the Applied Probability Trust 2001 

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