Designing the layout structure of manual order picking areas in warehouses

Abstract

Order picking is the warehousing process by which products are retrieved from their storage locations in response to customers' orders. Its efficiency can be influenced through the layout of the area and the operating policies. We present a model that minimizes travel distances in the picking area by identifying an appropriate layout structure consisting of one or more blocks of parallel aisles.The model has been developed for one commonly used routing policy, but it is shown to be fairly accurate for some other routing policies as well.

Optimizing fishbone aisles for dual‐command operations in a warehouse

“…Roodbergen and Vis [17] and Roodbergen et al [16] concentrate, as we do, on finding the best aisle layout given a constant storage capacity. They develop analytical equations for expected travel to a general number of pick locations, assuming routing heuristics.…”

“…They develop analytical equations for expected travel to a general number of pick locations, assuming routing heuristics. Roodbergen and Vis [17] consider only a one-block warehouse (Layout A), whereas Roodbergen et al [16] allow a general number of cross aisles and an alternative depot location. Both sets of authors validate their models with simulation.…”

Desarrollo de un modelo heurístico para la optimización en el manejo de material en estibas en una bodega

“…En [4] se estudian modelos de múltiples hileras y número de bloques. Los autores presentan un método revertido para optimizar el diseño del área de Picking e introducen un estimado estadístico para la distancia total promedio con el fin de poder minimizarla.…”

“…Otros autores van más allá y se preocupan, primero, por optimizar el diseño de la bodega y luego por minimizar las distancias asociadas a las rutas de la operación de Picking [4]. Para todos los diferentes casos, es necesario tener en cuenta que para cada tipo de negocio hay un manejo distinto.…”

Assessing the environmental impact of integrated inventory and warehouse management

“…The layout determines the configuration of each activity zone as well as the aisle orientation of the warehouse, which includes the numbers of aisles and cross aisles as well as their lateral depth and longitudinal width (Gu et al, 2007;Roodbergen et al, 2008). The standard warehouse layout is of rectangular shape, with aisles in a "north-south" or "east-west" direction.…”