Warehouse storage and retrieval optimization via clustering, dynamic systems modeling, and GPU-accelerated routing
By: Magnus Bengtsson, Jens Wittsten, Jonas Waidringer
Potential Business Impact:
Makes warehouse robots find items faster.
This paper introduces a warehouse optimization procedure aimed at enhancing the efficiency of product storage and retrieval. By representing product locations and order flows within a time-evolving graph structure, we employ unsupervised clustering to define and refine compact order regions, effectively reducing picking distances. We describe the procedure using a dynamic mathematical model formulated using tools from random dynamical systems theory, enabling a principled analysis of the system's behavior over time even under random operational variations. For routing within this framework, we implement a parallelized Bellman-Ford algorithm, utilizing GPU acceleration to evaluate path segments efficiently. To address scalability challenges inherent in large routing graphs, we introduce a segmentation strategy that preserves performance while maintaining tractable memory requirements. Our results demonstrate significant improvements in both operational efficiency and computational feasibility for large-scale warehouse environments.
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