Tone Lerher, PhD
University of Maribor, Faculty of Logistics, Slovenia

Series: Energy Science, Engineering and Technology
BISAC: SCI024000

This book presents throughput and energy related performance calculations for shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems.
Shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems are special designs of autonomous vehicle storage and retrieval systems and are used in practice for handling totes (plastic containers). The systems consist of an elevator with lifting tables that can execute vertical movements and shuttle carriers that can execute horizontal movements.

Compared to classical crane-based automated storage and retrieval systems, this system has several advantages, like: high throughput capacity, high flexibility, high scalability, etc. From the energy efficiency point of view, shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems are more energy efficient compared to crane-based systems, since the weight of the shuttle carrier is much smaller that the weight of the storage and retrieval machine. The latter has the impact on the driving engine and the energy (electricity) consumption and consequently CO2 emissions.

The above-mentioned advantages are the main generator for choosing shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems in practice.
In the literature reviews in scientific journals, unfortunately there are not that many contributions that would relate to the shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems compared to crane-based automated storage and retrieval systems. It has to be emphasized that shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems are used in practice for totes picking for at least 10 years or more.

Therefore, a decision to write this book about throughput and energy-related performance calculations for shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems, has been made. In particular, by using the author’s experiences and the current knowledge, the extended analyses of selected design variables, which have a dominant influence on the performance of shuttle-based storage and retrieval systems, have been performed, evaluated and discussed.

This book is motivated for pointing out to the research community the importance of the proposed research theme. The content of this book is written and discussed well enough for the researchers in this field and also for the practitioners. (Imprint: Nova)