Project:
Slotting Heuristics and Order-picking Efficiency in Warehouse Operations
Director of the project:
Jens Burger, PhD
Email: jensburger@upb.edu
Project duration:
July 2018 - December 2018
Summary
Order picking, the process of collecting and sorting a set of products according to customer orders, is the main cost driver in warehouse operations. Order picking consists of travel between product locations, retrieval of the specific stock keeping unit (SKU), and sorting of SKUs according to customer orders. Travel is estimated to contribute approximately 50% of the total order picking costs. Due to daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal and yearly demand fluctuations, order picking efficiency can vary greatly under time-varying order patterns. We investigate the time-dependent dynamics of order picking efficiency in relation to different slotting strategies to understand resilience to order fluctuations and their impact on picking efficiency.