An evaluation of order picking routeing policies

TLDR

Order picking, the assembly of a customer’s order from items in storage, is an essential link in the supply chain and the major cost component of warehousing. The critical issue is to simultaneously reduce the cost and increase the speed of the order picking activity. The study evaluates various routing policies in a random storage environment, assesses the impact of warehouse shape and pick‑up/drop‑off location, and examines their interaction across different pick‑list sizes. The experimental results show that the optimal routing procedure generates significantly shorter routes than heuristic methods, with composite and largest‑gap policies outperforming simpler heuristics, and that warehouse shape and pick‑up/drop‑off location also affect picking efficiency.

Abstract

Order picking, the assembly of a customer’s order from items in storage, is an essential link in the supply chain and is the major cost component of warehousing. The critical issue is to simultaneously reduce the cost and increase the speed of the order picking activity. The main objectives are to: evaluate various routeing policies in a random storage environment; evaluate the impact of warehouse shape and pick‐up/drop‐off location; and examine the interaction of the routeing policies, warehouse shape, and pick‐up/drop‐off location under different pick list sizes. The experimental results clearly indicate that the optimal routeing procedure generates significantly shorter routes than heuristic methods. The composite and largest gap routeing policies are, however, significantly better than simpler heuristic procedures. Further testing, in addition, indicates that the shape of the warehouse and the location of the pick‐up/drop‐off point can affect the picking efficiency.