Development and testing of software tool for warehouse design and picking optimisation
by Eleonora Bottani; Roberto Montanari; Marta Rinaldi
International Journal of Management and Decision Making (IJMDM), Vol. 18, No. 2, 2019

Abstract: The picking process is a manual, labour-intensive process, whose efficiency is affected by a number of different factors, which contribute to determine the travel distance covered by pickers. This paper describes the development of an original software tool programmed with Microsoft ExcelTM to help design picker-to-parts order picking systems and simultaneously evaluate the effect and interactions of various design and operating factors on the process performance. The software allows the geometry of any rectangular warehouse to be reproduced as a function of its main parameters, i.e., the number of aisles and cross-aisles, shape factor and total storage capacity, and the application of four routing policies to be simulated. The software was applied to derive the travel distance as a function of the routing policy, shape factor, number of cross-aisles and length of the order picking list, in a warehouse of fixed storage capacity.

Online publication date: Fri, 29-Mar-2019

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Management and Decision Making (IJMDM):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

    Username:        Password:         

Forgotten your password?


Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com