The influence of e-commerce on the design of warehouses - a literature review

Babiche Aerts, Trijntje Cornelissens and Kenneth Sörensen

Working Papers from University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics

Abstract: The advent of e-commerce has challenged the functionality of warehouses and their operations. Ways to tackle these challenges on a tactical and operational level have been widely studied. However, the design of storage and retrieval systems, representing the strategical decisions that count as a fi?rst step towards more effi cient picking operations, have been investigated far less. In this literature review, we present a framework based on three objectives that underlie an effi cient design of a storage and retrieval system: effi cient use of available storage space, minimization of order pickersfi? travel distance, and fl?exibility of the order picking system as a whole. Th?e framework is complemented with design-related decisions considered to have an infl?uence on one of the proposed objectives. Additionally, we restructure this framework into a classifi?cation table that allows to compare and evaluate storage and retrieval systems by means of the three objectives. Our classi?cation reveals an evolution of storage and retrieval systems towards an increased use of automation, with the use of AGVs as the latest development. We highlight the most important turning points in this evolution of storage and retrieval systems, and give an overview of performed research and future research directions.

Keywords: Storage and retrieval systems; Warehouse design; Automation; AGV (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2018-11
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ant:wpaper:2018013

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