Aisles, routes and roads

Why it matters

A warehouse is only as good as the trips through it. A beautiful storage block that a forklift cannot reach is a storage block that does not exist. A dock door with no road is a door no truck can use.

In plain words

There are three kinds of movement space:

• Aisles run between rack rows. They are created by the racking generator, never drawn by hand. A cross aisle cuts across a long block so forklifts do not have to drive all the way round.
• Routes (paths) are the main corridors inside the building: the forklift highway from receiving to storage, the pedestrian walkway to the office, the escape route to an exit.
• Roads are outside: the truck road from the gate to the doors.

Each is sized for a design vehicle: the largest thing that has to use it. A road is sized for a 19 m semi-trailer. A forklift route is sized for a counterbalance truck. A vehicle needs more width on a bend than on a straight, and the platform knows that.

In Warehouse Studio

Draw a route

1. On the Movement & Safety tab, choose MHE Path, Pedestrian Path, Egress Path or Road.
2. Click each corner of the route. Double-click or press Enter to finish. Esc cancels.
3. With the path selected, choose its Vehicle to set the design vehicle. Corners can be given a turning radius.

The platform joins paths that meet into one network. Where two paths cross mid-way, that crossing is a junction.

What the platform checks

Finding	Meaning
Path over racking	A route's centreline runs through rack rows. The finding says how many metres.
Turning	A corner is too tight for the design vehicle.
Aisle dead end	An aisle that a forklift can enter but not leave or reach the rest of the floor from.
Rack face inaccessible	A row whose face has no aisle in front of it. Those positions are counted as dead.
Site containment	A road leaves the site.
Dock apron	Not enough room in front of a door for a truck to back up.

A road that ends near a dock door, or passes along its apron, serves that door. A door no road serves is reported.

Routing on the aisles

When the simulation, or the copilot, needs the distance from a door to a rack bay, it walks the actual aisles and perimeter of the floor, not a straight line through the steel. Where the aisles cannot connect two points, the distance is drawn straight and flagged as estimated.

Try it

In Sandbox, draw an MHE Path from the staging zone up into the storage zone, and a Pedestrian Path from a door to where an office would be.

Words you just learned

Aisle · cross aisle · route / path · road · design vehicle · network · junction · serves · apron.