Optimization Algorithm To Improve Order Picking In Low-Level Picker-To-Part Warehouse: A Case In A Spares - Part Warehouse Of An Automotive Industry

Abstract

Nowadays, warehouses are facing more competition challenges about better responsiveness to customer orders. The order picking problems are becoming one of the main issues in warehouses because it is one of the major operations leading to the increase of warehouse costs and travel time. The problem is related to layout design, storage assignment and routing in warehouse. This project merely focuses on batching orders by its savings and routing methods in a warehouse by analyzing and comparing the performance of traversal and return routing policies. The objective is to minimize the travel distance to complete a batch of orders since there is no particular route of picking currently. In order to solve the considered problem, details of savings algorithm given for selecting items into one batch and mixed integer linear programming for calculating travelling distance were mentioned in the thesis. The study was conducted for small spare-parts under a specific warehouse’s context of parallel picking aisles, picker-to-part policy.