Experiences with the Automated Storage and Retrieval ... · Why Automatic Storage and Retrieval System? • In 1996 the NL started to plan a new storage for The RL, and investigated

Experiences with the Automated

Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS)

in Mo i Rana

Helén Sakrihei, Head of The Repository Library,

The National Library of Norway

The Repository Library

• Established in 1989

• Staff: 17 employees

• Interlending per year:

100,000 documents

• Aquisition per year:

100 – 200,000 documents

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The Repository Library

• Collection:

• 780,000 monographs

• 1,5 million issues

of periodicals

• 50,000 microfilms

• Audio books

• Music CDs

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Why Automatic Storage and Retrieval

System?

• In 1996 the NL started to plan a new

storage for The RL, and investigated

the possibilities for building an ASRS

• Advantages

• Traditional storage would cost more

to build (15 – 20 million NOK)

• Operation expenses would be lower

• ASRS would require 20-25% of the

base area of a traditional storage

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Why Automatic Storage?

• The ASRS would be based on a

well known tecnhology used

by companies such as Lego,

Husquarna etc. etc.

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Why Automatic Storage?

Disadvantages:

- The mechanics would make

The ASRS vulnerable

- Would it be noisy?

- Operating The ASRS

would be monotonous?

- Books could disappear

when they didn’t have a

permanent place on a shelf?

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Moving into the ASRS

• In 2000 The Ministry of Culture

and Church Affairs accepted our

plans for building an ASRS with

a maximum cost of 100 million NOK.

• The RL closed temporarily in

October 2002.

• Within 15 months we moved most

of the collection into The ASRS.

• Reopened June 2003

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The Automatic Storage and Retrieval

System (ASRS)

• 41 500 steel boxes

• folders

• Three gangways

• Three Automatic Miniload

Cranes

• 200 boxes in/out per hour

• Random storage

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Random storage

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Random storage

• No permanent box or folder

• No permanent location

• Each location has an coordinate

• Barcodes

• Attached to each other in the

Warehouse Management

System (WMS)

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How does it work?

• Every morning loan orders are

sent from Bibsys to

WMS.

• The cranes fetch the boxes which

contain ordered material

• The boxes are brought to

the pick up stations in the Retrieval

Centre

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How does it work?

• The operators read the barcode on

the publication, and both WMS and

Bibsys are updated

• Some orders require

manual work:

- microfilms

- article copies

- multi-volume publications

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Operation stability

• 160,000 items out and 220,000

items in to storage per year

• High operation stability

• Automation engineer who

maintains the hardware

• Four of our co-workers have been

special trained in ASRS/WMS

• Service on Storage once a year

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How has The ASRS changed the way we

work?

• The need of manpower to carry out

our loanorders has been reduced to

1/3.

• More capacity to other tasks, such as

cataloguing

• New tasks:

- books to digitization

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Collection control

• Coordinated shelf lists from Bibsys and Swisslog

• In order to find books in storage that aren’t registrated

in the catalogue, and books in the catalogue that aren’t

in storage

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Problems…

• When errors do occur,

we often manage to solve them klarer vi som

ourselves

• Depend on a good support

agreement

• Hardware problems – the RL

• Software problems – Swisslogg

• Spare parts

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Conclusion

• The ASRS has given us easy access

to our collection and made us able

to carry out all loan orders

within 24 hours

• From time to time we do have

shutdowns, but all in all the

operation stability is high

• Books can disappear, but more

seldom than from traditional bookshelves

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Plans

• By 2012 todays storage is filled

• Now we are planlegging the next

storage

• known technology

• use existing infrastructure

• easy to build

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Kiitos…

[email protected]

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