Robot picker solution in order picking systems: an ergo-zoning approach

Abstract

Manual order picking is the most labour-intensive activity in warehouses. As an alternative, robot pickers that can work alongside manual order pickers have emerged. This paper presents such a robot picker and develops a method for assigning products to two warehouse zones; one for robot pickers and one for human pickers. A Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) was used to develop the zoning method, minimizing human workload and maximizing the similarity of product categories in each zone. The method was verified in a case study.