Retrieval Strategies for a Carousel Conveyor

摘要

A carousel conveyor is a length of shelf fashioned into a closed loop that is rotatable (under computer control) in either direction. It is increasingly found in automated warehouses since it can help considerably with the storage and retrieval of small parts. Among the benefits of a carousel is that, rather than have a picker, human or robotic, travel to retrieve an item, the item can travel to the picker. This allows the picker to perform some other activity (e.g. sorting, packaging, labelling, or picking from another carousel) while the item is travelling. This parallelism of activity enables greater throughput and therefore enhanced warehouse operation.