Warehouse robotization with Wheel.me genius: A puzzle-based movable racks system

In this paper, we first introduce a new type of warehouse which combines the properties and operations of puzzle-based storage systems and robotic mobile fulfillment. Thanks to a long-term collaboration between the Logistics 4.0 Lab at NTNU and wheel.me, we have introduced and explored a new configuration called Puzzle-Based Movable Rack (PBMR) system where racks can be moved with autonomous wheels. One additional advantage of such system is that movable racks can move diagonally. We model and analyze the system studying different configurations and showing the impact on density and average cycle time/throughput. We finally introduce potential future research for such system