September 13th, 2012
Warehouse simulator recognised by logistics industry
Yale’s recently released warehouse simulation program has
received a finalist award at the highly regarded Logistics and Material
Handling Mercury Awards. The award was
in the ‘Materials Handling Solution’ category and was presented at the annual
presentation night in Sydney on the 6th September.
The Yale® warehouse simulator is an extremely
accurate software program designed to provide operators of medium to large
warehouses with a sophisticated consultancy solution. It can show how a particular forklift fleet
in a particular warehouse scenario will perform and provides a platform for
trying out different approaches and strategies for a warehouse operation.
The program uses the same simulation ‘engine’ used by major
European airports, leading rail infrastructure companies and other blue-chip
organisations.
The input interface breaks down the sections of the largest
warehouse into atomic parts including marshalling, parking and staging areas,
the exact type of racking, storage and the fleet to be used.
Over 100 different models of Yale forklifts are used so the
customer can see the impact of different forklift types and performance issues
such as forklift speed. Racking and storage variables include; selective,
double-deep, block-stack, drive-in and staging/marshalling, while goods flow
scenarios include in/out-bound flow and frequency, order-picking and
replenishment, and wave and batch picking.
Customers can experiment with different layouts, racking
configurations and timings and overlay with different forklift options like
reach trucks. They can they see a visual
representation of all scenarios in 2D and 3D as well as analyse data using
graphical results and charts. It will also provide indicative cost information.
The simulation won’t provide the ultimate answer, but the
results can be used to make informed business decisions. The results obtained from running a
simulation include:
- Time
spent handling loads
- Idle/utilisation
times
- Utilisation
of staging areas, racking and doors/docks
- Hourly
flow rates into and out of racking, staging areas and docks/doors
- Visual
indication of bottlenecks
- Energy consumption and indication of battery charging and changing