2단계 뱃치 픽킹 알고리즘과 성과분석

Order picking is one of the most crucial activities in the warehouse management. In practice, batch picking rather than pick-by-order is widely used for picking efficiency. In this study, we consider the finite volume capaciy of the picking cart in batching the orders. We propose a two-stage order batching algorithm for this practical problem. In the first stage, we apply a heuristic algorithm for the bin packing problem to minimize the number of picking tours; and in the second stage, pairwise exchange is applied for the two orders assigned to two different tours, while satisfying the cart capacity so as to minimize the total travel distances of the picker. Simulation is used to compare the average performance of the proposed method for various routing methods of the picker.