Automated Storage Retrieval System Lift Interface Sorting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current material handling systems in warehouses face inefficiencies in transferring items between storage levels due to multiple lift strokes and sorting steps, which decrease throughput by requiring separate lift operations for each item in a load-out, rather than sorting items at a lift interface and picking them with a common lift stroke.
Innovation Solution
An automated storage and retrieval system that sorts items at a lift interface and uses a common lift stroke to transfer sorted items, with autonomous transport vehicles and lift modules working in conjunction to optimize the sequencing and loading of mixed pallets, allowing for efficient transfer and assembly of items across multiple storage levels.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If separate lift operations are used for each item in a load-out, then item retrieval accuracy is maintained, but system throughput decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple separate lift operations into a single common lift stroke by sorting items at the lift interface before lifting. Multiple items from different storage locations are sorted and positioned at the lift interface in advance, then all sorted items are picked together in one lift operation, merging what would have been multiple sequential lift strokes into a single simultaneous operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary sorting of items at the lift interface before the lift operation occurs. By pre-positioning and sorting the required items at the lift interface in advance of the lift stroke, the system prepares everything needed for a common pick operation, eliminating the need for multiple sequential lift operations to retrieve different items.
2Measurement precision
If multiple sorting steps are implemented, then item sequencing accuracy improves, but transfer time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the sorting function from the lift operation itself and relocates it to the lift interface where items are pre-sorted before lifting. By separating the sorting function from the lifting function and performing sorting at the interface level, the system achieves accurate item sequencing without requiring multiple sorting steps during the lift operation, thereby reducing transfer time.
Solution Approach 2:
Item sorting is performed in advance at the lift interface before the actual lift operation. This preliminary sorting action ensures that items are correctly sequenced and positioned beforehand, allowing the lift operation to proceed efficiently without additional sorting steps, thus maintaining sequencing accuracy while minimizing transfer time.
3Stability of the object's composition
If items are sorted during outbound flow after gantry crane transport, then load-out organization is achieved, but additional sorting steps increase operational complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs the sorting action preliminarily at the lift interface before items enter the outbound flow. By sorting items at this early stage in the process flow, the load-out organization is established upfront, eliminating the need for additional sorting steps later in the outbound flow after gantry crane transport.
Solution Approach 2:
The lift interface serves as an intermediary location where sorting is performed between storage retrieval and outbound flow. This intermediary sorting step consolidates the organization requirement, allowing items to be properly sequenced at the interface rather than requiring separate sorting operations during subsequent transport stages.
Data Source
AI summary
A product order fulfillment system includes multiple decks arrayed at different levels and defining multilevel decks, at least one autonomous transport vehicle on each of the decks, and configured for holding and transporting a pickface on each deck, at least one lift, traversing and connecting more than one level of the decks, and arranged for lifting and lowering the pickface from the decks, and at least one pickface transfer station on each deck interfacing between the transport vehicle and the at least one lift to effect transfer of the pickface between the transport vehicle and the at least one lift, the at least one lift defines a fulfillment stream of mixed case pickfaces outbound from the multilevel decks to a load fill, at least one stream of the fulfillment stream has an ordered sequence of streaming pickfaces wherein the ordered sequence of streaming pickfaces is based on another fulfillment stream.