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A novel approach for modeling order picking paths
Author(s) -
Ozden Sabahattin G.,
Smith Alice E.,
Gue Kevin R.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
naval research logistics (nrl)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.665
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1520-6750
pISSN - 0894-069X
DOI - 10.1002/nav.21966
Subject(s) - aisle , visibility , visibility graph , graph , computer science , metric (unit) , order picking , sight , mathematics , warehouse , theoretical computer science , geography , regular polygon , engineering , operations management , geometry , physics , archaeology , astronomy , meteorology
We introduce the visibility graph as an alternative way to estimate the length of a route traveled by order pickers in a warehouse. Heretofore it has been assumed that workers travel along a network of travel paths corresponding to centers of aisles, including along the right angles formed where picking aisles join cross aisles. A visibility graph forms travel paths that correspond to more direct and, we believe, more appropriate “travel by sight.” We compare distance estimations of the visibility graph and the aisle‐centers method analytically for a common traditional warehouse design. We conduct a range of computational experiments for both traditional and fishbone warehouse layouts to assess the impact of this change in distance metric. Distance estimations using aisle‐centers calculates a length of a picking tour on average 10–20% longer compared to distance estimations based on the visibility graph. The visibility graph metric also has implications for warehouse design: when comparing three traditional layouts, the distance model using a visibility graph resulted in choosing a different best layout in 13.3% of the cases.