Picking time reduction has been the traditional perspective for warehouse optimization. When structural safety is considered, optimization of warehouse operations should be read even in terms of load mass distribution. In many practical cases the static safety of the system is related to mass distribution and barycenter highness, for example when a vehicle hits the structure or even in the extreme case of an earthquake. To investigate the problem a simulation model is developed with AutoModTM software. The model developed simulates a generalized AS/RS warehouse where the single physical location is managed. To evaluated the performances of the AS/RS a simulation experiment is completed. The aim of the experiment is to investigate the impact of different storage policies on intrinsic structural safety and performances in term of picking time and comparing the results with the variety caused by different factors such as: shuttle speed and warehouse filling rate. © 2013 DIME UNIVERSITÀ DI GENOVA.