Patent ID: 8851818

Claim:
An automatic warehouse comprising: a rack including shelves each including trays; traveling vehicles each of which is provided to a corresponding one of the shelves, and independently travels in a horizontal direction to load and unload articles to and from the rack, the shelves being vertically arranged, the trays being horizontally arranged; stations which are horizontally spaced from each other, and receive an article to be stored on and an article unloaded from the rack; elevators each of which elevates the articles, belongs to a corresponding one of the stations, and mediates traffic of articles between the corresponding station and at least one of the traveling vehicles; and a shelf assigning unit configured to assign, to each of the stations, one or more of the shelves to which the station has priority of use over the rest of the stations; wherein when assigning some of the shelves to any one of the stations, the shelf assigning unit is configured to assign the some shelves which are vertically consecutive; and each of the stations is placed at a vertically different position, and when assigning the some shelves to any one of the stations, the shelf assigning unit is configured to assign the some of the shelves so that a vertical position of any one of the some of the shelves corresponds to a vertical position of the one of the stations.