Metaheuristics for the Order Batching Problem in Manual Order Picking Systems

Autor(en)

Sebastian Tobias Henn, Sören Koch, Karl Dörner, 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

1866-8658

Publikationsdatum

2010

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

101015 Operations Research, 502017 Logistik, 502052 Betriebswirtschaftslehre

Schlagwörter

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/metaheuristics-for-the-order-batching-problem-in-manual-order-picking-systems(4f8c3a86-5f11-44b5-a43c-61c42717371b).html