Factors affecting the picking travel distance in the leaf warehouse

Abstract

The research aims to evaluate the effects of four main factors, including order picker routing policies, storage assignment policies, warehouse sizes, and pick-list sizes, on the picking travel distance in leaf warehouses. The simulations of all possible combinations of levels were created which the outputs from them were, then, used as the inputs for a statistical study assessing the main and interaction effects from different factors. The result indicated that the four-factor interaction had a statistically significant effect on the picking travel distance. The two heuristics showed statistically significant different average travel distances. Comparing to the exact shortest routing, the Leaf S-shape outperformed the Leaf largest-gap with optimal gaps of 18-28% and 31-37%, respectively.