Cross Aisled

A new warehouse design makes distribution centers more efficient by helping companies retrieve products from warehouse shelves faster. Because of this discovery, customers will receive items quicker.

Traditional designs limit efficiency and productivity because they require workers to travel longer distances and less-direct routes to retrieve products from racks and deliver them to designated pickup-and-deposit points.

The restrictive, conventional design is a system of parallel "picking" aisles that, depending on the size of the distribution center, are sometimes separated by one or more cross aisles.

Whereas a traditional warehouse with 21 picking aisles has no cross aisles, a new proposed "Optimal Cross Aisle" model inserts two diagonal cross aisles that originate at the same pickup-and-deposit point.

Viewed from above, the two diagonal cross aisles make a "V" in roughly one-half of the total space occupied by picking aisles and rack rows. This simple modification gives workers -- a forklift driver, for example -- a "straight-line advantage" when traveling to and from some of the pick locations.

"Our results suggest that for unit-load warehouses, radically new designs could lead to faster retrieval rates and significantly reduced costs for operating distribution centers," said Russell Meller, professor of industrial engineering and director of the Center for Engineering Logistics and Distribution at the University of Arkansas.

--LiveScience Staff

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Credit: University of Arkansas