A two stage approach for order and rack allocation with order backlog in a mobile rack environment

Cristiano Arbex Valle () and John Beasley
Additional contact information
Cristiano Arbex Valle: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Annals of Operations Research, 2025, vol. 351, issue 1, No 7, 167-201

Abstract: Abstract In this paper we investigate a problem associated with operating a robotic mobile fulfilment system (RMFS). This is the problem of simultaneously allocating both orders and racks to multiple pickers with inventory constraints and order backlog. We present a two stage optimisation based approach for the problem. In our two stage approach we, in the first-stage, deal with the orders which must be definitely fulfilled (picked), where the racks chosen to fulfil these first-stage orders are chosen so as to (collectively) contain sufficient product to satisfy all orders. In the second-stage we restrict attention to the racks chosen in the first-stage solution in terms of allocating second-stage orders. We present three different strategies with regard to splitting the orders into a set of first-stage orders and a set of second-stage orders. One of these strategies minimises the requirement to make decisions as to the rack sequence (i.e. the sequence in which racks are presented to each picker). We present a heuristic procedure to reduce the number of racks that need to be considered. Extensive computational results are presented for test problems that are made publicly available; including test problems that are significantly larger than previous problems considered in the literature.

Keywords: Logistics; Integer programming; Mobile storage racks; Order backlog; Order picking; Robotic mobile fulfilment systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-024-06058-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:annopr:v:351:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10479-024-06058-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-024-06058-6

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().