Title: An evaluation of factors affecting order picking performance in the fishbone warehouse

Authors: Makusee Masae; Witchuda Boonreung; Panupong Vichitkunakorn; Christoph H. Glock

Addresses: Division of Computational Science, Faculty of Science, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Songkhla, 90110, Thailand ' Division of Computational Science, Faculty of Science, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Songkhla, 90110, Thailand ' Division of Computational Science, Faculty of Science, Prince of Songkla University, Hat Yai, Songkhla, 90110, Thailand ' Institute of Production and Supply Chain Management, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Hochschulstr. 1, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany

Abstract: Order picking is the process of retrieving items from storage locations to fulfil customer orders. It has been considered a key determinant of warehouse performance. To increase order picking efficiency, several planning problems need to be solved simultaneously. This research, therefore, solves the joint order picker routing and storage assignment problem in the fishbone warehouse. We evaluate the effects of four main factors, namely pick-list size, warehouse size, picker routing policy, and storage assignment policy, on the picker travel distance. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) results indicate, at a level of significance of 0.05, that each factor including all two- and three-way interactions have a statistically relevant effect on the picker travel distance, except for the three-way interactions of warehouse size, pick-list size, and routing policy. Four-way interactions are not significant at the 0.05 level. Computational results show that the combination of the aisle-by-aisle routing heuristic and within-aisle storage outperforms other combinations of routing and storage assignment heuristics. Our findings support practitioners in identifying appropriate routing and storage assignment policies for efficiently operating fishbone warehouses.

Keywords: picker routing; storage assignment; order picking; warehousing; fishbone warehouse.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISM.2024.138843

International Journal of Integrated Supply Management, 2024 Vol.17 No.2, pp.120 - 143

Received: 13 Jun 2023
Accepted: 30 Nov 2023
Published online: 31 May 2024 *

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