Metaheuristics for the Order Batching Problem in Manual Order Picking Systems

Autor(en)
Sebastian Henn, Sören Koch, Karl F. Doerner, Christine Strauss, Gerhard Wäscher
Abstrakt

In manual order picking systems, order pickers walk or drive through a distribution warehouse in order to collect items which are requested by (internal or external) customers. In order to perform these operations efficiently, it is usually required that customer orders are combined into (more substantial) picking orders of limited size. The Order Batching Problem considered in this paper deals with the question of how a given set of customer orders should be combined such that the total length of all tours is minimized which are necessary to collect all items. The authors introduce two metaheuristic approaches for the solution of this problem: the first one is based on Iterated Local Search; the second on Ant Colony Optimization. In a series of extensive numerical experiments, the newly developed approaches are benchmarked against classic solution methods. It is demonstrated that the proposed methods are not only superior to existing methods but provide solutions which may allow distribution warehouses to be operated significantly more efficiently.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Rechnungswesen, Innovation und Strategie
Externe Organisation(en)
Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg
Journal
Business Research
Band
3
Seiten
82-105
Anzahl der Seiten
24
ISSN
2198-3402
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03342717
Publikationsdatum
05-2010
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
502052 Betriebswirtschaftslehre
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Business, Management and Accounting (miscellaneous)
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/f9806de4-d312-4726-a1f7-d0b6d1dde598