Internal Logistics Integration by Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems: A Reengineering Case Study

Nowadays, factors like globalization, productivity, and reduction of time-to-market make the impact of logistics on production by far wider than in the past. Such a complex scenario originated considerable interest for the design, planning and control of warehousing systems as new research topics (De Koster et al. 2007). However, in spite of the importance of warehouse design and management, authors agree on the lack of systematic approaches (Baker and Canessa, 2009). Moreover, the existing contributions do not typically consider the problem of warehouse design in a continuous improvement context. On the contrary, with the enhanced customer demand, for most manufacturing industries it has become increasingly important to continuously monitor and progress the internal logistics. This paper presents a preliminary study for the reengineering of the logistics in a Southern Italy firm producing shoes and accessories based on formal modeling. We address a widely used solution for warehouse material handling, i.e., Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RSs) (Dotoli and Fanti 2007). These systems are a combination of automatic material handling and storage/retrieval equipments characterized by high accuracy and speed. In order to reengineer the logistic system, a Unified Modelling Language (UML) (Miles and Hamilton, 2006) model is adopted (Dassisti, 2003).