Bin Preparation

A prepared Bin is available for the robots without additional digging or preparation.

A prepared Bin is protected against being dug down or covered by other work areas. The Bin will remain
available for the Robots as long as it stays in the prepared state.

A prepared Bin is normally placed in position as the upper Bin in its stack. Most of the upper Bins in a Grid are
not prepared, and may become blocked by other digging areas. The number of simultaneous prepared Bins is
limited, because each prepared Bin will occupy an area on the Grid. Therefore, in rare cases, a prepared Bin
may temporarily leave the prepared state (this will not affect its place in the preparation queue).

The WMS requests AutoStore to prepare Bins. The requested Bins constitute a "preparation queue".

The Bins in the preparation queue are in a prioritized order. However, AutoStore will try to prepare every Bin
within a reasonable time.

It is recommended that the preparation queue contains Bins for the next 30 minutes of operation.

A Bin may appear multiple times in the preparation queue. The WMS may request the Bin being prepared
once for each planned picking operation.

The foremost appearance of a Bin leaves the preparation queue when the Bin is closed or removed from a
Port.

A selected Bin (returned by the openbin method) has the highest priority. If the WMS explicitly selects a Bin as
an ad hoc operation (for instance in a short pick or deviation situation), it should normally first request a
preparation (even if it won't wait for it to be prepared) in order to avoid releasing the Bin preparation request
belonging to another picking operation.

The rearmost appearance of a Bin leaves the preparation queue when a preparation request is canceled.