Integrated pallet retrieval and processing in warehouses under uncertainty

Jan-Niklas Buckow (), Marc Goerigk () and Sigrid Knust ()
Additional contact information
Jan-Niklas Buckow: Osnabrück University
Marc Goerigk: University of Passau
Sigrid Knust: Osnabrück University

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, 2025, vol. 47, issue 3, No 4, 817-855

Abstract: Abstract We study the problem of integrated pallet retrieval and successive processing in warehouses motivated by a practical company setting. A set of pallets has to be retrieved in a warehouse having a single stacker crane and multiple input/output-points, and the goal is to minimize the makespan. Previous research focuses on minimizing stacker crane travel times, while subsequent pallet processing times at the input/output-points are neglected. A distinction is made between a blocking and buffering variant, in which either no or sufficient buffer space is available at the input/output-points to temporarily store pallets there before they are processed. To hedge against uncertainties in the pallet processing times, we additionally apply robust optimization with budgeted uncertainty sets. We develop dynamic programming algorithms for the worst-case evaluation, identify polynomially solvable cases when there is only a single input/output-point, and present mathematical models for the general case with an arbitrary number of input/output-points. Our extensive computational study reveals that the integrated models yield considerable benefits compared to either ignoring the stacker crane travel times or the pallet processing times. We propose heuristic algorithms that provide good solutions for large instances in a short amount of computational time.

Keywords: Warehouse; Stacker crane scheduling; Multiple input/output-points; Integrated pallet retrieval and processing; Robust optimization; Budgeted uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00291-024-00806-7 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:orspec:v:47:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s00291-024-00806-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... research/journal/291

DOI: 10.1007/s00291-024-00806-7

Access Statistics for this article

OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management is currently edited by Rainer Kolisch

More articles in OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management from Springer, Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().