Joint Order Batching, Routing, and Picker Scheduling in Manual Order Picking Systems

Abstract

Upcoming e-commerce markets force warehouses to handle a larger number of orders, while the time to pick orders has shortened. Order picking management, in particular organizing efficient and effective systems to retrieve items from storage locations, has been identified as an important and complex planning operation. In this paper, three operational planning decisions, order batching, routing, and order picker scheduling, are integrated to manage order picking operations more efficiently.