Storage Optimization of Low-Level Manual Picking Warehouse Considering Vertical Travel

Abstract

Order picking is considered the most critical operation in warehousing. In the low-level manual picking warehouse, in order to increase the warehouse capacity and make full use of the rack space, the overall height of the rack is increased by increasing the number of layer and reducing the height of each layer of the rack, or directly increasing the number of layers. These all lead to take more time to pick up the goods at the bottom or top of the rack. If the picking time of the vertical travel is not taken into account and the best-selling goods are placed on the bottom or top layer, the order picking efficiency will be greatly affected. Therefore, based on class-based storage strategy, we propose a picking time estimation model that considers the vertical travel. A heuristic algorithm is constructed to optimize the warehousing location and determine the optimal warehousing boundary of goods of different types on each shelf. The results show that the proposed algorithm can better optimize the storage location and reduce the picking time.