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Digital Library

of the European Council for Modelling and Simulation

 

Title:

Simulating the automation of sorting crates – a stepwise approach

Authors:

Armand Misund, Henrique M. Gaspar

Published in:

 

 

(2022). ECMS 2022, 36th Proceedings
Edited by: Ibrahim A. Hameed, Agus Hasan, Saleh Abdel-Afou Alaliyat, European Council for Modelling and Simulation.

 

DOI: http://doi.org/10.7148/2022

ISSN: 2522-2422 (ONLINE)

ISSN: 2522-2414 (PRINT)

ISSN: 2522-2430 (CD-ROM)

 

ISBN: 978-3-937436-77-7
ISBN: 978-3-937436-76-0(CD)

 

Communications of the ECMS , Volume 36, Issue 1, June 2022,

Ålesund, Norway May 30th - June 3rd, 2022

 

Citation format:

Armand Misund, Henrique M. Gaspar (2022). Simulating the automation of sorting crates – a stepwise approach, ECMS 2022 Proceedings Edited By: Ibrahim A. Hameed, Agus Hasan, Saleh Abdel-Afou Alaliyat, European Council for Modeling and Simulation.

doi:10.7148/2022-0020

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7148/2022-0020

Abstract:

This paper presents an initial study on the task of automating the sorting of crates. It was paramount in the study that the technology used for the automation process is already existing and available to the client in Norway; therefore an existing pallet sorting system was used as state of the art. The simulation was performed via a stepwise approach, that is, first we simulated the process as it is now. Based on this manual case we simulated the same system under a new automated task at time, until the final case (close to) fully automated. A set of KPIs was defined and used in the assessment of all cases, including the manual one. These are Opex [NOK], Capex [NOK], Reliability [Stops over time], Robustness [%, Probability of consequence], and Efficiency [crates per hour]. Our finding overall is that the time it took to sort a given number of crates decreased with increasing implementation of automation through the various change cases. With reduced time consumption the efficiency and number of crates per hour increased, from 300 in the manual case, to 1200 in the fully automated case. The increase in automation also resulted in increased costs, both capital- and operating costs. If we look at the cost increase in relation to the capacity increase, the cost per sorted crate decreases by about 50%. The manual process sorts 300 crates per hour, and if we look at the cost per sorted crate, the fully automated case must sort 600 crates per hour to breakeven and justify the automation.

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