An Exact Solution Approach to the Single-Picker Routing Problem in Warehouses with an Arbitrary Block Layout

André Scholz ()
Additional contact information
André Scholz: Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg

No 160006, FEMM Working Papers from Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management

Abstract: The Single-Picker Routing Problem (SPRP) arises in warehouses when items have to be retrieved from their storage locations in order to satisfy a given demand. It deals with the determination of the sequence according to which the respective locations have to be visited. The storage locations in the warehouse are typically arranged in a specific way and constitute a so-called block layout. Using this structure, Scholz et al. (2016) proposed a model to the SPRP in a single-block layout whose size (in terms of number of variables and constraints) is independent of the number of locations to be visited. They briefly described how the model can be extended to deal with multiple blocks, but also stated that its size will drastically increase. In this paper, the extension of this formulation is considered and different scenarios are pointed out which can be used to significantly decrease the size of the model. By means of numerical experiments, it is demonstrated that the size of the formulation can be decreased by up to 60%, resulting in a reduction of computing time by up to 99.5%. Furthermore, it is shown that computing times do not increase with an increasing number of blocks, which is a major advantage of the model as no efficient solution approach to the SPRP is available able to deal with more than two blocks.

Keywords: Traveling Salesman; Order Picking; Picker Routing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2016-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.fww.ovgu.de/fww_media/femm/femm_2016/2016_06.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

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:mag:wpaper:160006

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FEMM Working Papers from Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Guido Henkel ().