Warehouses without aisles: Layout design of a multi-deep rack climbing robotic system

In the last decade, different multi-deep rack climbing robotic (MRR) systems have been introduced, particularly in e-commerce warehouses. These systems have great benefits, as aisles are no longer needed, allowing a high storage density on a small footprint. They only need vertical channels through which battery-powered robots can climb the racks, retrieve totes from any desired position, and bring them to a workstation. This paper studies two novel MRR system layouts: the cross and the compact layout. In addition, we compare performance with the more traditional aisle-based layout. The system performance, particularly operational cost and energy consumption, depends on these system layouts. The paper establishes queuing network models to investigate the trade-off between storage capacity and throughput of the system with these three layouts, taking robot blocking prevention into account. We compare the throughput, storage density, horizontal travel time, and energy consumption of the system. The results show that, in most cases, the compact layout outperforms other layouts on throughput. For energy consumption, the choice of layout depends on the footprint. We formulate a model to assist warehouse managers in choosing a layout of minimum annual operational cost, with a required storage and throughput capacity. We also compare the MRR system with an alternative robotic compact storage and retrieval system on operational cost and energy consumption. The MRR system appears to always have lower energy consumption and operational cost.