The min-max order picking problem in synchronised dynamic zone-picking systems

Saylam S., Celik M., SÜRAL H.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH, cilt.61, sa.7, ss.2086-2104, 2023 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 61 Sayı: 7
  • Basım Tarihi: 2023
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/00207543.2022.2058433
  • Dergi Adı: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, ABI/INFORM, Aerospace Database, Business Source Elite, Business Source Premier, Communication Abstracts, Compendex, INSPEC, Metadex, zbMATH, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.2086-2104
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Warehouse management, order picking, zone picking, workload balancing, dynamic programming, heuristics, PERFORMANCE APPROXIMATION, MULTIPLE PICKERS, WAREHOUSE, DESIGN, ASSIGNMENT, ALGORITHM, DISTANCE
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

In both manual and automated warehouses, a combination of efficient zoning and picker routing plays an important role in improving travel time, congestion, and system throughput. This paper considers the order picker routing problem in a dynamic and synchronised zoning environment, where the items corresponding to each customer order are picked simultaneously in multiple zones, and zones may change between different orders. The objective is to minimise the maximum time of completing the picking activities in any zone. Using a min-max type of objective not only minimises the makespan of an order picking wave, but it also helps balance the workload of the order pickers more effectively. We present a mathematical model for the optimal solution of this problem, as well as a dynamic programming approach to find the optimal solution for the case where a zone is a set of adjacent aisles. Computational experiments on randomly generated instances show that the dynamic programming approach is able to find optimal solutions in negligible computational times.