Scheduling the truckload operations in automatic warehouses

This work presents a scheduling problem that arises in an automatic storage/retrieval warehouse system AS/RS involving the scheduling of the truck load operations. The truck loading operations are modelled as job shop problem with recirculation. The loads are considered as jobs, the pallets of a load are seen as the job’s operations. The forklifts are the machines. The minimization of the makespan allows minimizing the idle time of the warehouse’s equipments.A procedure based on genetic algorithms is presented to sequence the pallets of a set of loads that are prepared simultaneously. The genetic algorithm includes specific knowledge of the problem to improve its efficiency. This work presents interesting computational results for the minimization of the makespan.