Joint optimisation of order batching and picker routing in the online retailer’s warehouse in China

Abstract

Order picking is the core of warehouse operations and considerable researches have been conducted on improving its efficiency. In this paper, we aim at the joint optimisation of order batching and picker routing based on a famous and typical online retailer of China, which mainly focuses on fast-moving consumer goods. An integer programming is formulated to minimise the total travelling distance involving with order batching and picker routing. In the stage of order batching, an effective batching procedure based on similarity coefficient which is measured by overlapping channels between orders is proposed. In the stage of picker routing, an improved ant colony optimisation algorithm with local search is proposed. Based on those simulated orders generated by actual transaction data, numerical experiments are conducted to verify the performance of the algorithm we proposed. Results show that the proposed joint optimisation algorithm has potential advantages under various order sizes and order structures, which implies that it is effective and efficient particularly in the online retailing of fast-moving consumer goods.

Keywords:

• warehousing systems
• ant colony optimisation
• routing
• order batching
• efficiency analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank editors and referees for their valuable suggestions which can significantly improve our manuscript.

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71131004], [71171008], [71301122], [71571079]; Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University [NCE-13-0228]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Wuhan University).