Title: Order-picking methods: improving order-picking efficiency

Authors: Goran Dukic, Cedomir Oluic

Addresses: Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Ivana Lucica 1, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia. ' Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, Ivana Lucica 1, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract: Order-picking, or the process of retrieving items from storage locations in response to a specific customer request, is the most laborious and the most costly activity in a typical warehouse. This is especially true in the case of the conventional warehouses, with almost 90% of total time spent on order-picking activities and 55% of all operating costs attributed to order-picking. As 50% of total order-picking time is spent on travelling, organisational changes and application of various order-picking methods to reduce travel distances could lead to significant improvements. In this paper, three groups of order-picking methods are analysed: routing, storage and order batching. In order to determine the potential order-picker travel distance savings using a particular method or a combination of various methods, an extensive simulation is done. The presented results showed up to 80% possible reduction of travel distances using the appropriate combination of order-picking methods.

Keywords: warehousing; order-picking; routing; storage; order batching; travel distances; industrial logistics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2007.013214

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2007 Vol.3 No.4, pp.451 - 460

Published online: 12 Apr 2007 *

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