Towards human-centric warehousing: the impact of rack configuration and cognitive demands on order picking performance

Dominic Loske, Eric H. Grosse, Christoph H. Glock and Matthias Klumpp

Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) from Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL)

Abstract: Within warehouse logistics processes, design concepts and management decisions regarding operations systems determine the demands placed on human operators. While the literature proposes that human-centric work system design positively affects the operator, the impact on operator performance remains under-explored. We analyse the case of a German retail warehouse where the shelf numbering follows the pickers' walking direction from right to left. However, all human order pickers working in this system are familiar with a left-to-right writing system due to their schooling and training. Because cognitive psychology proposes that writing system direction impacts spatial orientation in goal-oriented visual search, we are motivated to explore the interplay of rack configuration and human cognitive demands. We ground our mixed-effects model on archival data, including 470,968 storage location visits. Our results indicate that order pickers work 18.7% faster when picking items starting from the left side of the shelf compared to starting their visual search from the right side. Our findings suggest that human search strategies in warehousing operations are influenced by attention templates like writing direction on a similar level as by system design elements of the warehouse itself. This insight underscores the potential for diversified future human-centric design approaches in warehouse logistics.

Date: 2026-08-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-neu
Note: for complete metadata visit http://tubiblio.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/161816/
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in International Journal of Production Research 6 (2026-08-19) : pp. 2231-2247

Downloads: (external link)
https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/items/a85382e3-403d-4259-bcaa-0a394ee0cbf0
https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2024.2399707
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2024.2399707 [302 Found]--> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207543.2024.2399707)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207543.2024.2399707
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dar:wpaper:161816

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) from Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dekanatssekretariat ().