• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.71-81
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• 2018

Forklifts in a shipyard lift and transport heavy objects. Tasks occur dynamically and the rate of the task occurrence changes over time. Especially, the rate of the task occurrence is high immediately after morning and afternoon business hours. The weight of objects varies according to task characteristic, and a forklift also has the workable or allowable weight limit. In this study, we propose an online forklift dispatching algorithm based on nearest-neighbor dispatching rule using minimal cost assignment approach in order to attain the efficient operations. The proposed algorithm considers various types of forklift and multiple jobs at the same time to determine the dispatch plan. We generate dummy forklifts and dummy tasks to handle unbalance in the numbers of forklifts and tasks by taking their capacity limits and weights. In addition, a method of systematic forklift selection is also devised considering the condition of the forklift. The performance indicator is the total travel distance and the average task waiting time. We validate our approach against the priority rule-based method of the previous study by discrete-event simulation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

Controlling industrial vehicle operated by human in warehouse was not simple since the information transfer for controlling the vehicle was not easy. However, as the technology for the WMS (Warehouse Management System) has been advanced and the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) has come into wide use in a workplace, the control of man-operated vehicle became less difficult as do to AGVS (Automated Guided Vehicle System). This study examines the ways to improve the efficiency of warehouse operation through introducing rule of task assignment for the vehicles, particularly forklift. This study, basically, refer to AGV operation policy because a great number of studies for AGV dispatching rule have been done and the mechanism for the controlling vehicles is very similar. The workers in field prefer to simple dispatching rules such as Shortest Retrieval Time First (SRTF), Shortest Travel Time First (STTF), and Longest Waiting Time First (LWTF). However, these rules have potential disadvantage. Thus, several rules made up by combining rules mentioned above are introduced and these new rules use threshold value or evaluation formula. The effectiveness of these new rules are tested by simulation and the results are compared. This study proposes favorable dispatching rules for forklift in warehouse for the efficiency of the vehicle operation and stability of service level.