Your WCS for your 4-Way Shuttle Warehouse

The first compact warehouses deploying shuttles were introduced about four decades ago. Those were cable-pulled 2-way shuttles. Since then technology has evolved significantly due to the availability of high-density, reliable battery technology, as well as wireless communications. Nowadays the 4-way shuttle has become the industry standard for high density automated storage solutions.

That is not surprising, shuttles provide better flexibility and adaptability, as they can be reallocated to where they’re momentarily needed. And if a higher throughput is required more shuttles can be added. Moreover, if a shuttle fails another shuttle can take over, eliminating single points of failure.

However, 4-way shuttles also suffer from a major drawback: added complexity. Route planning, route scheduling, congestion management, and deadlock prevention all become more complex.

I’m in the process of adapting my WCS to 4-way shuttle projects.

My knowledge and experience may of interest to you. Contact me if you are developing your own WCS for shuttle storages and you want advice on

• technical design choices,
• how to cope with warehouse (re-)organisation, route planning, route scheduling, congestion management, and deadlock prevention,
• how to improve warehouse performance in general.

My WCS may be of interest to you as well. Contact me if you

• are a logistics company offering warehouse storage systems and technology and want to expand into 4-way shuttle warehouses, and you are looking for a WCS to coordinate the movement of goods across the shuttles and possibly the surrounding conveyor system,
• are a warehouse logistic software provider and want to expand your product portfolio with a WCS,
• operate a 4-way shuttle automated warehouse system but you are not happy with your current WCS, for example because requirements have changed since the warehouse became operational.