The Effects of Manual Material Handling Equipment on Loading and Unloading Time of a Case in a Pallet

In this study, we mainly investigate the impacts of usage of a raisable turntable as a material handling equipment in forward-picking area of the warehouse with respect to the loading and unloading operation of a box in a pallet. For unloading, we evaluate expected time to pick (extract) cases from a pallet. We develop a varying picking time expression with respect to the human factors and the positions of cases in a pallet to formulate expected picking time. We also conduct a detailed experimental design to investigate the effects of several important parameters such as pick list size and number of cases in a pallet on picking time. We show that human factors and picking from different positions, as well as number of picks, have an important impact on extracting time of cases. Therefore, we present that using turntable for picking or loading operation offers time savings over traditional manual material handling in most cases.