Improving order-picking operations with precedence constraints through efficient storage location assignment: evidence from a retail company

Maria A. M. Trindade*, Paulo S. A. Sousa*, Maria R. A. Moreira*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)
10 Downloads

Abstract

This paper is inspired by a manual picking retail company where shape and weight constraints affect the order-picking process. We proposed an alternative clustering similarity index that considers the similarity, the weight and the shape of products. This similarity index was further incorporated in a storage allocation heuristic procedure to set the location of the products. We test the procedure in a retail company that supplies over 191 stores, in Northern Portugal. When comparing the strategy currently used in the company with this procedure, we found out that our approach enabled a reduction of up to 40% on the picking distance; a percentage of improvement that is 32% higher than the one achieved by applying the Jaccard index, a similarity index commonly used in the literature. This allows warehouses to save time and work faster.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)34-52
Number of pages19
JournalU.Porto Journal of Engineering
Volume7
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Apr 2021

Keywords

  • Correlated policy
  • Precedence constraints
  • Shape constraints
  • Storage location assignment problem
  • Weight constraints

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