Colloquia

Summary

The recent increase in online groceries delivery makes legacy grocers expand their online delivery infrastructure, creating a city-based delivery network of highly automated micro fulfilment centres to reduce the order delivery time and cost. Vanderlande, where this research is carried out, is a market leader in logistic automation solutions and wants to enter this market and gain insights into the pros and cons of the different available technologies. Therefore, all Goods-to-Person solutions suitable for micro fulfilment centres are analysed, evaluated and compared. The four most interesting unique solutions are then further investigated, and mathematical models for these solutions are created. The selected solutions are Autostore, Exotec Skypod, Two-step AMR and Vanderlande Adapto. The technical comparison using the models found that Autostore is the most suitable solution for the target case in this research, mainly due to its high flexibility and scalability and having the highest storage density of all solutions, significantly reducing the system size. Finally, the solutions' capital and operational expenditure are estimated, which found that Autostore is also the most cost-effective solution. However, the required amount of maintenance per site can make or break any solution and is, therefore, the most critical factor that influences the competitiveness of all solutions.