Shuttle-Based Storage and Retrieval System: A Literature Review

Abstract

While the e-commerce logistics industry is developing rapidly, its sustainable development has received certain attention. The ultimate goal of sustainable development is to achieve common, coordinated, fair, efficient, and multi-dimensional development. To promote the sustainable development of logistics, the automation technology of warehousing is undoubtedly an excellent breakthrough, since the automation technology can not only make the warehousing system efficient and with a low-error rate, but also affect the energy consumption of the warehousing system. This paper studies the Shuttle-Based Storage and Retrieval System (SBS/RS) in automated warehousing. Moreover, the paper classifies the existing literature into three categories: Physical design (including depth, configuration, and number of tiers); control strategy (including scheduling rules, storage strategies, scheduling command, and interference); and performance evaluation (including throughput, time, and energy). These categories are all factors that warehouse designers must consider when designing a system. Finally, this paper proposes future research directions for SBS/RS: Adding speed metrics, limiting buffer size, targeting space constraints, applying four-way shuttles, and increasing the carrying capacity of a single machine.