| dc.description.abstract | National economies affected by globalization, resulting in the changing form
consumer habits and social needs. Consumer demand gradually transformed into “a
small, diverse and multi-frequency” of product to satisfy retailers and consumers, in
such case, many distribution center emerges progressively.
In the era of various and small amount products demand, rapid environmental
changing along with high volume popularity computer equipment applications and
E-commerce shown that companies must continue to accelerate their business
activities, in order to catch up on times, consumers and competitors’ pace.
March 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems, it is expected that the robots
would significantly improve Amazon’s packing and shipping efficiency. Besides, Kiva
robots were tasked with picking up shelves in Amazon′s giant warehouses and
delivering them to warehouse employees at various stations. Therefore, reducing
operation time and costs to enhance systems performance will appreciate company
accomplishments.
In this paper, we give a critical survey of existing works and discuss open
problems in this field. Through investigating Kiva dispatching rules and Pod storage
position dispatching rules in contrasting replenishment ratio, simulation experiments
are conducted to evaluate two performance measures ─ Total System Time（TST）,
and Total Travel Distance of Kiva（TTD）to achieve the best efficiency. | en_US |