A Distributed Adaptive Coordination Protocol to Enhance Manual Order Picking Operations

A U-shaped layout for manual order-picking systems

In manual order picking systems, order pickers walk or ride through a warehouse in order to collect items requested by customers. The performance of such a system is significantly dependent on its layout which determines the lengths of the order pickers’ tours and the corresponding picking times. Whereas for classic warehouse layouts all picking aisles are arranged in parallel to each other, in...

A comparison of picking, storage, and routing policies in manual order picking

This article examines the effect of three process decisions (picking, storage, and routing) on order picker travel, which is a major cost component of order fulfillment. The authors use a simulation model based on the operations of a distribution center that is currently picking one order at a time, storing product in a haphazard or random fashion, and using a simplistic procedure for routing p...

A Distributed Real Time Coordination Protocol

When the communication channels are subject to interruptions such as jamming, the coordination of the real time motions of distributed autonomous vehicles becomes a challenging problem, that differs significantly with fault tolerance communication problems such as reliable broadcast. In this paper, we investigate the issues on the maintenance of the coordination in spite of arbitrarily long int...

Gamification to enhance motivation in a real world order picking environment of an online grocer

Tabu search heuristics for the order batching problem in manual order picking systems

In manual order picking systems, order pickers walk or ride through a distribution warehouse in order to collect items 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 q...