Fall 2009 » Research Briefs » Fishbone Aisles

Fishbone Aisles

March, 2009
 
 Traditional warehouse design
 
 Optimal Cross Aisle design
 
 Fishbone Aisle design

Customers ordering products online expect to receive their items quickly, and smart companies know that to be competitive, they must store and distribute goods efficiently. Therefore, warehouses have become an essential part of the supply and distribution chain.

Russell Meller has found a way to make warehouses more efficient. By helping companies retrieve products from warehouse shelves faster, customers will receive items quicker.

Meller, professor of industrial engineering, and Kevin Gue, an engineering professor at Auburn University, developed two designs that accept lower overall density of storage space but improve order-picking response times.

Whereas a traditional warehouse with 21 picking aisles has no cross aisles, the researchers' "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 half of the space occupied by picking aisles and rack rows. Meller and Gue tested this design and discovered that it reduced picking costs by 11.2 percent.

For their second alternative design, Meller and Gue added vertical picking aisles. Viewed from above, the V-shaped cross aisles extend from the bottom to the top of the entire space allotted to picking aisles and rack rows. Horizontal rows of picking aisles occupy the two sections outside the diagonal, V-shaped cross rows. With this design, the researchers added vertical lines of picking aisles on the inside the cross rows.

The researchers call this model "Fishbone Aisles," and this configuration led to dramatic savings. Tests revealed that the cost to make a pick in the 21-aisle warehouse is 20.4 percent lower than in an equivalent traditional warehouse.  

"Our approach recognizes the emerging role of distribution centers in industry," Meller said. "A properly designed distribution center can provide a competitive advantage to firms in retail and industrial distribution."