Order allocation, rack allocation and rack sequencing for pickers in a mobile rack environment

Valle, Cristiano Arbex; Beasley, John E.

doi:10.1016/j.cor.2020.105090

Cited by 53 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…With regard to order and rack allocation two major differences between the work given in that paper and the work presented here are that Valle and Beasley [2021] is: (a) a single stage approach; where (b) all orders are treated equally. By contrast in this paper we have: (a) a two-stage approach; in which (b) we explicitly split orders into two sets, one set which must be picked and a second set which might be picked if appropriate, so treating orders unequally.…”

Section: Recent Literaturementioning

confidence: 97%

“…They discussed a number of problem areas associated with such systems and identified many research challenges. The literature survey in Valle and Beasley [2021] included additional papers beyond those considered in Azadeh et al [2019], . Accordingly, for space reasons, we only consider in this section work additional to that discussed there.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ouzidan et al [2020] considered the problem of a single picker and how to sequence the orders dealt with by that picker, as well as the racks to be brought to the picker. The problem they consider has also been considered in Boysen et al [2017], Fussler and Boysen [2019], Valle and Beasley [2021]. In their paper all racks contain just a single item and sufficient to satisfy all orders, rack revisits to the picker are allowed.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We should also mention here our previous work Valle and Beasley [2021]. In that paper we consider the problem of order and rack allocation, but also consider the problem of how to sequence racks for presentation to a picker.…”

Section: Recent Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In our objective, Equation (1), M is a large positive constant and the first term in that objective ensures that we minimise the total number of racks allocated to pickers. Using an objective related to rack minimisation is common in the literature (Boysen et al [2017], Hanson et al [2018], Valle and Beasley [2021], Xie et al [2021]) as it contributes to less movement of racks from the storage area to the picking area, and too encourages the picking of multiple products for different orders from the same rack.…”

Section: R R=1mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Valle¹,

Beasley²

2021

Preprint

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In this paper we investigate a problem associated with operating a robotic mobile fulfilment system (RMFS). This is the problem of allocating orders and mobile storage racks to pickers.We present a two-stage formulation of 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 those racks chosen in the first-stage solution in terms of allocating second-stage orders.We present three different strategies for first-stage order selection; 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 and too present a heuristic for order and rack allocation based on partial integer optimisation that makes direct use of our two-stage formulation.Extensive computational results are presented for test problems that are made publicly available.

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Section: Recent Literaturementioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recent Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: R R=1mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

Valle¹,

Beasley²

2021

Preprint

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A dynamic programming algorithm for order picking in robotic mobile fulfillment systems

Justkowiak,

Kovalyov,

Pesch

2024

Networks

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The order scheduling and rack sequencing problem deals with the order picking process in robotic mobile fulfillment systems: automated guided vehicles lift and transport movable storage racks to picking stations to supply items requested by customer orders which are put together in cardboard boxes on a workbench of limited capacity. To efficiently operate the station, the sequence in which racks visit the station one after another and the intervals at which customer orders are scheduled must be coordinated. We present a dynamic programming algorithm for the order scheduling and rack sequencing problem at a single picking station minimizing the number of rack visits. Despite monolithic mixed integer linear programming formulations, our approach appears to be the first combinatorial solution method for the problem in literature. A computational study demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach.

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