A carousel system is to be designed to serve a mechanical assembly plant. The system must have a total of 500 storage bins and a throughput of at least 125 storage and retrieval transactions per hour. Two alternative configurations are being considered. a. A One-carousel system or b. A Two-carousel system

In either case, the width of the carousel is to be 5.0 ft. and the spacing between carriers = 2.5 ft. One picker-operator will be required for the one-carousel system and two picker operators will be required for the two-carousel system. In either system vc = 75 ft/min. For the convenience of the picker-operator, the height of the carousel will be limited to five bins. The standard time for a pickup and/or deposit operation at the load/unload station = 0.4 min each if one part is picked or stored per bin and 0.6 min if more than one part is picked or stored. Assume that 50% of the transactions will involve more than one component per bin. Determine:

One-carousel System a. Required length of the one-carousel system b. Circumference of the one-carousel system c. # of carriers d. Total # of bins e. Cycle time for one transaction

f. Corresponding throughput rate/hour Two-carousel System g. Required length of the two-carousel system h. Circumference of the two-carousel system i. # of carriers j. Total # of bins k. Cycle time for one transaction l. Corresponding throughput rate/hour m. Which system (one or two carousels) better satisfies the design specifications?