A two-carousel storage location problem

We describe a problem of storing products in carousels that are grouped in pods of two. Each pod is served by one operator. The aim is to minimize the long-run average rotational time per retrieval operation. We formulate the problem as a new type of nonlinear partitioning problem and discuss several heuristic solution procedures.Scope and purposeThe time required to locate and pick a product from a carousel storage and retrieval system depends mainly on how the products are located in the carousel. In addition, the efficiency of a carousel system depends on several other operating characteristics such as its layout, number of layers and direction of rotation. We describe the problem of locating items in a system of carousels that are grouped in pods of two carousels and each pod is served by a single operator. We discuss simple heuristics that can be used to decide the items’ storage locations.