Title: A heuristic approach to the warehouse management problem: a real case study

Authors: Salma Mezghani; Ahmed Frikha

Addresses: UR Logistic, Industrial and Quality Management, Economic Science and Management Faculty of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia ' UR Logistic, Industrial and Quality Management, High Institute of Industrial Management of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia

Abstract: In this paper, a new heuristic approach is proposed to solve a real Storage Problem (SP) defined by a Tunisian company, SOTIM, that aims at minimising the number of used racks (bins) for the arrangement of the end products, 'mattresses' (items), each with a given size (width, height, length) and characteristics (ranges, colours, quantity). This heuristic is analysed for three special cases: 1) the number of bins is unlimited; 2) the number of bins is fixed; 3) the number of bins to be added. The proposed approach is verified by real data and the results obtained imply a significant improvement as compared to the integer programming model proposed.

Keywords: warehouse management; storage problems; supply chain management; SCM; variable-size bin packing problem; heuristics; integer programming; Tunisia; unlimited bins; fixed bins.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2012.049702

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2012 Vol.13 No.3, pp.342 - 357

Published online: 10 Dec 2014 *

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