Choreo - A new paradigm in warehouse management systems for ecommerce fulfilment

Choreo - 电子商务履行仓库管理系统的新范例

• 批准号: 720792
• 金额: $ 30.41万
• 依托单位: SYNERGY LOGISTICS LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: GRD Development of Prototype
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2016 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=720792
• 关键词: Choreo; new; paradigm; warehouse; management

Demanding e-Commerce fulfilment requires increasingly intelligent Warehouse ManagementSystems (WMS). Some vendors have introduced highly automated ‘goods-to-man’ stockmovement solutions but these are capital intensive and capacity-constrained. Other vendors,including Synergy, offer more flexible ‘man-to-goods’ (MTG) methods with intelligentpicking trolleys that are pushed to the stock locations. Although relatively inexpensivecompared with automation, MTG solutions are demanding for pickers and staffing costs canrise dramatically at peak periods. A new approach to this problem is to retain high flexibilitybut minimise human effort without requiring expensive automated plant and equipment, thekey being to coordinate movement of people and unpicked stock within the warehouse.A real time location system is proposed that will update precise 3D locations of the peopleand stock. New real-time routing and scheduling algorithms will identify the optimum routesfor stock and people movement around the warehouse and schedule change along thoseroutes, in real-time, to compensate for planned and unplanned events, e.g. delays within theWarehouse; new stock arrivals; new stock collection requests; predicted changes in stockcollection patterns in response to expected changes in received stock requests. A key elementof the proposed new system is dynamic relocation of unpicked stock within the warehouse tominimise the distance travelled for picking.This innovative WMS approach will:a) Significantly reduce the time taken to pick stock, enabling processing of more orders perday whilst optimising labour utilisation;b) Allow installation in any warehouse using any standard order/stock picking trollies andtotes;c) Provide robotic levels of efficiency at a much reduced cost level.This 18-month project will deliver detailed evaluations of the functionality and performancecapabilities based around three increasingly complete prototype demonstrators.

要求电子商务的实现需要日益智能化的仓库管理系统(WMS)。一些供应商已经引入了高度自动化的“货物到人”的库存转移解决方案，但这些解决方案是资本密集型和能力受限的。包括Synergy在内的其他供应商提供了更灵活的“人到货”(MTG)方法，通过智能拣货手推车推送到库存地点。虽然与自动化相比成本相对较低，但MTG解决方案对拣货员的要求很高，在高峰期人力成本可能会大幅上升。解决这一问题的一种新方法是在不需要昂贵的自动化设备和设备的情况下保持高度的灵活性，但最大限度地减少人力，关键是协调仓库内人员和未挑选的库存的移动。提出了一个实时定位系统，将更新人员和库存的精确3D位置。新的实时路线和调度算法将确定库存和人员在仓库周围移动的最佳路线，并实时沿这些路线改变计划，以补偿计划内和计划外事件，例如仓库内的延误；新的库存到达；新的库存收集请求；响应收到的库存请求的预期变化而预测的库存收集模式的变化。拟议的新系统的一个关键要素是在仓库内动态重新定位未挑选的库存，以最大限度地减少挑选的距离。这种创新的WMS方法将：a)显著减少挑选库存所需的时间，使每天能够处理更多订单，同时优化劳动力利用率；b)允许使用任何标准的订单/库存挑选手推车安装在任何仓库中；c)以大大降低的成本水平提供机器人水平的效率。这个为期18个月的项目将基于三个日益完善的原型演示器对功能和性能进行详细的评估。