3D warehouse: manage a shipping shift

Drag to rotate · scroll or pinch to zoom · tap a truck label to track its journey.

Game rules

• Choose number dock door (1–6) and no forklift (1–6), click Start shift.
• Trucks arrive according to a fixed schedule: first phase from 07:00 to 07:06 (6 vehicles), second phase from 07:15 to 07:21 (6 vehicles). The car only enters the door when there is an empty door; If not, wait outside on the beach.
• Each door only has enough room for a maximum of two forklifts working on one truck. The forklift is free to receive pallets for the truck that has entered the door earliest.
• The truck receives enough pallets, fills out the paperwork and leaves the door. Leaving the door more than 30 minutes late from arrival is late.
• Three stars: all 12 vehicles arrived on time with the fewest possible total doors and lifts. Two stars: 12 cars on time. One star: from 9 cars.

How to read the results

• The car is waiting in the yard, the forklift is still free: the blockage is the dock door. Adding forklifts doesn't help, because forklifts don't have trucks to load.
• The car has entered the door but is waiting for pallets, the forklift runs almost continuously: the bottleneck is the forklift. Adding doors doesn't help.
• Adding doors can make shifts worse. When there are few forklifts, opening many doors causes the forklift to be divided among many trucks at the same time: each truck is unfinished, no truck can finish early. Try 6 doors with 3 forklifts then compare with 5 doors.
• A forklift being 100% busy is not good. With equipment running at full capacity, there is no room left to absorb the rush of vehicles - the queue outside the yard grows very long.

How is the model calculated?

The warehouse has 4 rows of 3-tier shelves (468 pallets). Pallets of shifts are picked up from slots spread throughout the warehouse in a fixed order, so the running distance of each trip is different. The forklift goes along the pick-up path in front of the shelves, out the main aisle and then to the door: speed of 2.2 m/sec, lifts pallets off shelves in 0.6 minutes, places them on the floor in 0.5 minutes. The truck takes 1 minute to reverse into the door, 0.5 minutes to do paperwork, 1 minute to leave the door. The middle door is opened first because it is closer to the shelf. There is no random element: the same configuration always gives the same shift, so you can compare plays.

Not calculated: Staging goods in the gathering area, picking individually (picking), forklifts break down or charge batteries, workers count, vehicles arrive late compared to schedule. The above parameters are illustrative assumptions, not the norms of any warehouse.

⚖️ The model is a shape illustrating a common export warehouse, not based on any warehouse, business or forklift company; The in-game figures are the result of the above assumptions and are not intended as design norms. Model built using Three.js library (MIT license).

Frequently asked questions