PERISHABLE ITEMS ALLOCATION IN LIFO STORAGE SYSTEMS SERVED BY AUTOMATED GUIDED VEHICLES

The paper describes a study of designing rack storage systems managed according to a Last-In Fist-Out (LIFO) policy. The system is supposed to house a number of cyclic items (i.e. characterized by batch production and continuous deliveries policies). This kind of behaviour is common for high-consumption products in the food industry, such as pasta and bakery products.The aim of the study is to define a static design solution by assigning each item to a number of LIFO racks so that the overall system performance results are satisfactory. The dynamic behaviour is kept under control by adopting automated material handling devices such as Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs).This paper is an extension of a previous work by Ferrara et al. (2011), here named the single-allocation procedure, by allowing each item to be assigned to two different rack typologies (double-allocation solution).The convenience of the double-allocation solution in comparison with the single-allocation one is proven by a significant case study from the food industry.