General variable neighborhood search applied to the picking process in a warehouse Articles uri icon

authors

  • MENENDEZ, B.
  • PARDO, E.G.
  • DUARTE, A.
  • ALONSO-AYUSO, A.
  • MOLINA FERRAGUT, ELISENDA

publication date

  • February 2015

start page

  • 77

end page

  • 89

volume

  • 47

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1571-0653

abstract

  • The order batching problem is a part of the picking process of items in a warehouse. A set of items conform an order and a set of orders conform a batch. The problem consist of grouping the orders received in the warehouse in different batches. Each batch have to be collected by a single picker without exceed a capacity limit. The objective is to minimize the total time needed to collect all the items. In this paper we propose a General Variable Neighborhood Search algorithm to tackle the problem. Our approach outperforms other previous methods in the state of the art.

keywords

  • order batching problem; heuristics; vns; gvns