Order picking process at warehouses

Abstract

Order picking process is the most laborious activity in warehouse. The target of this paper is to identify the opportunities how to reduce order picker's travel distance in Very Narrow Aisle (VNA) shelf area warehouse. In pursuance of the targets of this paper, various different aspects are taken into account herein as follows: size of warehouse, storage, layout, routing. For optimisation of order picking process, the paper suggests some new approaches: volume-based storage method 'across-floors'; usage of correlation between order picking efficiency and stock accuracy. Research provided herein defines combinations of best individually applied strategies resulting in minimising travel distance.