The Automatic Storage and Retrieval System - Varastokirjasto

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…
helen.sakrihei@nb.no
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