Mitigating the risk of infection spread in manual order picking operations: A multi-objective approach

Abstract

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains experienced an unprecedented challenge to fulfill consumers’ demand. As a vital operational component, manual order picking operations are highly prone to infection spread among the workers, and thus, susceptible to interruption. This study revisits the well-known order batching problem by considering a new overlap objective that measures the time pickers work in close vicinity of each other and acts as a proxy of infection spread risk. For this purpose, a multi-objective optimization model and three multi-objective metaheuristics with an effective seeding procedure are proposed and are tested on the data obtained from a major US-based logistics company. Through extensive numerical experiments and comparison with the company’s current practices, the results are discussed, and some managerial insights are offered. It is found that the picking capacity can have a determining impact on reducing the risk of infection spread through minimizing the picking overlap.

Evaluating the impacts of COVID-19 outbreak on supply chain risks by modified failure mode and effects analysis: a case study in an automotive company

“…As identifying the comprehensive side effects of the COVID-19 outbreak in SCRM is at early stage (Baz & Ruel, 2021 ; Ivanov, 2021 ), there is a strong need to explore which types of supply chain risks can be most affected by the COVID-19 outbreak to provide more insights for companies in their future SCRM endeavors (Ardjmand, et al, 2021 ). In this regard, this paper aims to fill this gap by identifying potential risks in supply chains and investigate how those risks may be affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.…”

Managing COVID-19 disruption: the response of express couriers and lessons learned to improve resilience

“…As in Singh et al (2021), benefits in terms of hygiene for both logistics operators and customers have been highlighted. Ardjmand et al (2021) focus instead on another key activity in the logistics process: manual picking in the warehouse, where the presence of workers is particularly high.…”

“…Logistics service providers (LSPs) faced an exceptional situation (Choi, 2020;Singh et al, 2021) as well. They dealt with an increase of flows to be managed and to ensure, at the same Express couriers' response to time, the health of their employees (Cichosz et al, 2020;Lau et al, 2020;Ardjmand et al, 2021).…”

Cost-neutral reduction of infection risk in picker-to-parts warehousing systems

“…The risk of infection spread in warehousing operations is only considered in Ardjmand et al. ( 2021 ). The authors study an order batching problem which aims at grouping customer orders into (larger) picking orders such that the total order picking time, the makespan, and the time in which pickers are picking closer than at a specified physical distance are minimized.…”

“…To solve the resulting problem, they propose three multi-objective metaheuristics. Ardjmand et al (2021) do not aim to reduce the risk of infection by optimizing the routing of pickers but assume that pickers are fixedly routed according to an S-shape routing policy.…”