Francesco Pilati

Packaging strategy definition for sales kits within an assembly system

Packaging is typically the last task in a production process, especially in an assembly system. If an assembled product is sold as a single unit, its packaging is normally performed by the last workstation, in order to obtain a ready-for-sale product. Moreover, assembled product often comes with its accessories, packaged all together and supplied to the customer as a single unit: a sales kit. Due to the variety of products and accessories, the variety of kits is continuously increasing, requiring a complex definition of the best packaging strategy to adopt. The present paper aims to analyse the packaging problem in a production system, identifying and comparing the packaging strategies. These strategies provide, through a comparison model of total cost functions, a decision-making procedure for operations managers. Through a simulative study, a set of convenience areas for each analysed packaging strategy is derived. The findings from an industrial case study are also reported to validate the proposed methodology.

Unit-load storage assignment strategy for warehouses in seismic areas

Optimisation of unit-load storage systems located in seismic areas.Discussion of an effective assignment strategy for unit-load warehouses.Joint analysis of the storage/retrieval travel time and the rack stability.Multi-scenario case study taken from the beverage sector for an Italian company.Effective load configurations prevent seismic risks with high logistic performances. The reports from the strong earthquakes that hit seismic regions, as Italy, frequently show the damages occurring to the storage systems and the collapse of their racks, with devastating social and economic consequences. The loads stored in such systems represent the most of their weight, so that the overall structure stability is expected to highly depend on the chosen storage assignment policy. Conventional approaches relate the load assignment to the storage/retrieval (S/R) travel time, affecting the handling costs, neglecting any further issue. This paper faces the so-called unit-load assignment problem (ULAP) for industrial warehouses located in seismic areas presenting an innovative integer linear programming (ILP) model. The model includes both the S/R travel time and an innovative stability condition for the rack collapse prevention during seismic events. A case study, based on a multi-scenario analysis, is discussed to show the benefits coming from the application of the proposed strategy and to assess the impact of the stability issues on the average single-command travel time. The key results outline the effectiveness of the proposed strategy revealing that significant improvements in the structure stability are achievable with little decrease of the S/R efficiency.

New RFID pick-to-light system: Operating characteristics and future potential

The recent changes in customers orders, which on one hand are becoming more frequent and on the other require smaller quantities of several products, inevitably impact the job of warehouse picking managers, who find themselves in the necessary position to satisfy a high pick volume in a short time window. Moreover, warehouse manual picking is traditionally characterized by a high human factor impact; which derives that improving such a system requires a reduction of both orders processing time and human possible errors. In this sense, a possible strategy can be the development and employment of technological systems able to support operators during their picking tours. The aim of this study is to present a new pick-to-light design solution capable of driving different operators through their activities, preventing or reducing errors by a new real-time control and alert system, based on the main potentialities of the RFID technology. After the description of the technical characteristics and of the operation of the new solution, a qualitative comparison with other existing paperless picking systems is also proposed.

Refrigeration System Optimization for Drinking Water Production Through Atmospheric Air Dehumidification

Drinking water availability is one of the emerging challenges of the twenty-first century. Different technologies are investigated as possible sources of water for the arid regions. Atmospheric water vapor processing is a developing approach whose aim is to cool air to condensate the water present in the atmospheric moisture. Air dehumidification allows obtaining pure drinking water for geographical regions far from sea, rivers, and lakes.

Stochastic timed Petri nets to dynamically design and simulate industrial production processes

Stochastic timed Petri nets are among the most effective languages to model event driven uncertain processes. Their adoption in the industrial sector is even more diffuse and of potential help for the practitioners. This paper presents a stepwise approach to support the dynamic design and simulation of manufacturing and assembly production processes. An industrial application from the white good sector, based on a semi-automatic assembly line is, further, discussed demonstrating the approach flexibility and the modelling language key strengths. The stochastic timed Petri net model for such a scenario is described together with the simulation outcomes of interest for the assembly line design and the production and maintenance activity scheduling.