IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tprsxx/v58y2020i17p5337-5358.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal order picker routing in a conventional warehouse with two blocks and arbitrary starting and ending points of a tour

Author

Listed:
  • Makusee Masae
  • Christoph H. Glock
  • Panupong Vichitkunakorn

Abstract

This paper investigates manual order picking, where workers travel through the warehouse to retrieve requested items from shelves. To minimise the completion time of orders, researchers have developed various routing procedures that guide order pickers through the warehouse. The paper at hand contributes to this stream of research and proposes an optimal order picker routing policy for a conventional warehouse with two blocks and arbitrary starting and ending points of a tour. The procedure proposed in this paper extends an earlier work of Löffler et al. (2018. Picker routing in AGV-assisted order picking systems, Working Paper, DPO-01/2018, Deutsche Post Chair-Optimization of Distribution Networks, RWTH Aachen University, 2018) by applying the concepts of Ratliff and Rosenthal (1983. “Order-picking in a Rectangular Warehouse: a Solvable Case of the Traveling Salesman Problem.” Operations Research 31 (3): 507–521) and Roodbergen and de Koster (2001a. “Routing Order Pickers in a Warehouse with a Middle Aisle.” European Journal of Operational Research 133 (1): 32–43) that used graph theory and dynamic programming for finding an optimal picker route. We also propose a routing heuristic, denoted S*-shape, for conventional two-block warehouses with arbitrary starting and ending points of a tour. In computational experiments, we compare the average order picking tour length in a conventional warehouse with a single block to the case of a conventional warehouse with two blocks to assess the impact of the middle cross aisle on the performance of the warehouse. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of the S*-shape heuristic by comparing it to the exact algorithm proposed in this study.

Suggested Citation

  • Makusee Masae & Christoph H. Glock & Panupong Vichitkunakorn, 2020. "Optimal order picker routing in a conventional warehouse with two blocks and arbitrary starting and ending points of a tour," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(17), pages 5337-5358, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:58:y:2020:i:17:p:5337-5358
    DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2020.1724342
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2020.1724342
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00207543.2020.1724342?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Katrin Heßler & Stefan Irnich, 2023. "Exact Solution of the Single Picker Routing Problem with Scattered Storage," Working Papers 2303, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    2. Mustapha Haouassi & Yannick Kergosien & Jorge E. Mendoza & Louis-Martin Rousseau, 2022. "The integrated orderline batching, batch scheduling, and picker routing problem with multiple pickers: the benefits of splitting customer orders," Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, Springer, vol. 34(3), pages 614-645, September.
    3. Laura Korbacher & Katrin Heßler & Stefan Irnich, 2023. "The Single Picker Routing Problem with Scattered Storage: Modeling and Evaluation of Routing and Storage Policies," Working Papers 2302, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    4. Masae, Makusee & Glock, Christoph H. & Vichitkunakorn, Panupong, 2021. "A method for efficiently routing order pickers in the leaf warehouse," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tprsxx:v:58:y:2020:i:17:p:5337-5358. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/TPRS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.