Design of Warehouse Including Temporary Storage Using Queuing Network Theory

In warehouse design, designers have to consider complex systems including temporary storage area, where loads are placed when they are passed from one machine to another. In this paper, a queuing network model is proposed to calculate the temporary storage area required for a warehouse. Previously, the warehouse design was made difficult because the design constraints and parameters were inter-related. In this paper, warehouse system is modeled as a network of nodes and the temporary storage area is expressed as a queue within each node. We used a typical warehouse system as a case study to evaluate the effectiveness of this design method. The proposed method can simultaneously determine the required temporary storage area, number of machines and long term storage area. Layout constraints can also be taken into consideration with this method.