Exploring the relationship between the adoption of lithium-ion battery forklifts and warehouse organisational patterns

The introduction of the lithium-ion technology boosted the market for electric forklifts, by providing high performing batteries that guarantee greater energy efficiency in warehouse operations. On top of the substantial savings obtained in terms of both operational and environmental costs, lithium-ion batteries offer the possibility to perform fast partial charges – known as ‘opportunity charging’ – that can be carried out during idle times such as operator breaks. Opportunity charging increases forklift availability and enables to leverage on warehouse organisation for reducing the battery lifecycle cost. So far, the interest of the scientific literature towards forklift lithium-ion batteries has mainly focused on technological aspects, neglecting the implications of organisational factors on the system performance. In addition, contributions have mostly tackled the adoption of lithium-ion batteries on Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) serving manufacturing processes, without deeply examining warehouse applications. The present paper aims at investigating the relationship between the adoption of lithium-ion battery forklifts and warehouse organisational patterns. The research was structured into three main steps. First, a review of the literature on lithium-ion batteries in industrial applications was performed. On one hand, contributions related to the characteristics of lithium-ion batteries were investigated, highlighting how technological, contextual, and organisational variables affect lithium-ion battery lifecycle costs. On the other, the relationship between the use of lithium-ion batteries and organisational patterns was explored. In a second step, semi-structured interviews were conducted with both material handling providers and Third Party Logistics (3PL) providers to test and extend the literature findings. Finally, an analytical model was developed to study the relationship between the lithium-ion battery forklift lifecycle cost and different organisational patterns. Results showed that the opportunity charging is turning operators’ downtimes into levers to improve warehouse operational performance, and opened room for further research on the sustainability of warehouse activities.