Title
An ACO-based online routing method for multiple order pickers with congestion consideration in warehouse
Abstract
One of the challenging problems in order picking is how to deal with the congestion happens in warehouse with multiple pickers. In this paper, we consider an ant colony optimization (ACO)-based online routing method to find picking routes for multiple order pickers under nondeterministic picking time. Here, a default route is formed by ACO for each single picker. Then, we coordinate these routes to alleviate congestion by dedicated rules based on indoor positioning and information sharing technologies, during order pickers serve the picking task. Our results indicate that the proposed method can achieve a reduction in the order service time primarily by coping with the congestion. We conclude that the new method is particularly effective in multiple-block picker-to-parts warehouses.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1007/s10845-014-0871-1
Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing
Keywords
Field
DocType
Warehouse management,Routing method,Multiple order pickers,Congestion,Ant colony optimization
Ant colony optimization algorithms,Warehouse,Mathematical optimization,Nondeterministic algorithm,Order picking,Real-time computing,Engineering,Warehouse management,Default route,Service time,Information sharing,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
27
2
0956-5515
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
15
0.59
28
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Fangyu Chen1331.22
Hongwei Wang252830.86
yong xie3150.59
Chao Qi4513.94