Metaheuristics for the Order Batching Problemin Manual Order Picking Systems

In manual order picking systems, order pickers walk or drive through a distribution warehouse inorder to collect items which are requested by (internal or external) customers. In order to performthese operations efficiently, it is usually required that customer orders are combined into (more substantial)picking orders of limited size. The Order Batching Problem considered in this paper dealswith the question of how a given set of customer orders should be combined such that the total lengthof all tours is minimized which are necessary to collect all items. The authors introduce two metaheuristicapproaches for the solution of this problem; the first one is based on Iterated Local Search,the second one on Ant Colony Optimization. In a series of extensive numerical experiments, thenewly developed approaches are benchmarked against classic solution methods. It is demonstratedthat the proposed methods are not only superior to existing methods, but provide solutions whichmay allow for operating distribution warehouses significantly more efficient...