Abstract
During the past decades automated storage/retrieval (AS/R) systems have been dominantly implemented in most industrial fields due to their handling efficiency and high utilization of storage space. Such AS/R systems consist of several modules each of which contains two racks and a S/R machine. This paper proposes a design of the hybrid AS/R module which can be adopted without too much initial expenditure by most of small-and-medium sized companies. The hybrid module consists of an AS/R module on the upper floor and a traditional warehouse module on the lower floor. For the AS/R module, analytical expressions of the expected travel times for the S/R machine and the elevator per operation are derived. The expected travel times represent the performance of the module and thus can be used for its economic design.