ASSIGNMENT
#1
Design and Control of Warehouse Picking: a Literature Review
Q. DESCRIBE THE CONCEPT OF
WHOLE ARTICLE SPECIALLY
FOCUS ON FOLLOWING
QUESTIONS
Order picking represents the most expensive and the
most voluminous activity in a warehouse management,
where quality of service greatly depends on this process.
Layout of warehouse can have significant impact on the
order picking. In this article, researchers analyze the
impact of warehouse layout for warehouse with racks,
regarding the aisles and client storage zones, to routing
of order pickers.
The cost of order picking is estimated to be as much as
55% of the total warehouse operating expense. Any
underperformance in order picking can lead to
unsatisfactory service and high operational cost for its
warehouse and consequently for the whole supply chain.
In order to operate efficiently, the order picking process
needs to be robustly designed and optimally controlled.
MAIN
WAREHOUSE
ACTIVITIES
Receiving, transfer, put away, order picking, selection,
accumulation/sortation, cross-docking, and shipping.
In this paper, researchers concentrate on low-level,
picker-to-parts order picking systems employing humans
(and with multiple picks per route). These systems form
the very large majority of picking systems in the
warehouses worldwide. Over 80% of all order-picking
systems in western-Europe.
The design of real order-picking systems is often
complicated where number of factors affects the
productivity and performance of the warehouse. The most
common objective of order-picking systems is to
maximize the service level subject to resource constraint
such as labor, machines and capital.
Order-picking situations are becoming more and more
daily practice, particular for mail order companies which
sell products online.
A crucial link between order picking and service level
is that the faster an order can be retrieved, the
sooner it is available for shipping to the customer.
If an order misses its shipping due time, it may have
to wait until the next hipping period. Also short order
ORDER-
retrieval times imply high flexibility in handling late
changes in orders.
PICKING Minimizing the order retrieval time (or picking time)
is therefore a need for any order-picking systems.
OBJECTIVES: Picker to parts have gotten less attention of
researchers due to their complexity and diversity but
because it is mainly for the manual warehouse
systems. It is widely used in the practical world.
Furthermore, the areas of storage assignment and
routing are appeared to catch the attention of people
and they are paying attention to its details. With the
help of different routing methods, warehouse experts
are choosing what suits them the best and are
applying those methods inside their warehouses.
EXPLAIN THE COMPLEXITY OF
ORDER PICKING SYSTEMS
Order picking involves the process of clustering and scheduling the customer orders, assigning stock on
locations to order lines, releasing orders to the floor, picking the articles from storage locations and the
disposal of the picked articles.
Many different order-picking system types can be found in warehouses. Often multiple order-picking systems
are employed within one warehouse. The majority of the warehouses employ humans for order-picking.
Automated and robotized picking is only used in special cases (e.g. valuable, small and delicate items).
Order picking is the most labor-intensive and costly activity of warehouses.
The main challenges of its improvement are the synchronization of warehouse layout, storage assignment
policy, routing, zoning, and batching.
Any underperformance in order picking can lead to unsatisfactory service and high operational cost for its
warehouse and consequently for the whole supply chain.
Furthermore, the competitiveness of the warehouse depends on how it adapts to the unique customer
demands and product parameters and the changes.
COMPLEXITY OF ORDER
PICKING SYSTEMS
The operators usually have to manage the picking sequence
based on best practices taking into consideration the product
stacking factors and minimizing the lead time.
Recent trends in manufacturing and distribution have made the
order picking design and management more complex.
In manufacturing, there is move to a smaller lot sizes, point of use
delivery, order and product customization and cycle time reduction.
In distribution logistics, In order to serve customers, companies
tend to accept late orders while providing rapid and timely delivery
within tight time windows
Smaller warehouses are replaced by fewer large warehouses to
support economies of scale
Distance is also an issue: the farther a system in located from the
origin, the harder the system is to design and control. It costs labor
hours but does not add value. Therefore, it is the first area which
needs improvement.
In order to be more responsive to customers, companies’ also adopting
value added activities like (knitting, labeling, product or order assembly,
customized packaging or palletization) that requires high integration in
order-picking-process.
Warehouses are also involved in recovering products, materials and
product carriers from customers in order to redistribute them to other
customers, recyclers, and original equipment manufacturers.
Between the time an order is released to the warehouse and the time it
takes to reach its destination, there is ample opportunity for errors in
both accuracy and completeness, not to mention time lost.
There is gap between practice and academic research, since not all new
picking methods have been studies and the optimal combination of
COMPLEXITY layout, storage assignment, order clustering, order release methods,
picker routing and order accumulation have been addressed to a minor
OF OPS extent only.
There are typical decision problems in design and control of order-
picking process.
The design of real order-picking systems is often complicated, due to a
wide spectrum of external and internal factors which impact design
choices. Decision problems related to these factors are often concerned
at the design stage.
Companies make decisions on design and control of order picking
systems at tactical or operational level, with a different time horizon. A
certain layout or storage assignment may perform well for certain
routing strategies, but poorly for others. Therefore, one decision model
cannot fix all problems and cannot fit for every order picking design.
WRITE DOWN THE KEY
OBJECTIVES OF THE
WAREHOUSE
Following are the main key objectives of the warehouse:-
Maximize warehouse storage utilization and minimize operating expenses
Maximum use of space for the safe keeping of goods,
Economically coordinate the necessary activities, facilities and manpower
Efficient movement of goods
Effective utilization of labor & equipment’s
Maximum protection of items
Needs to have safety stocks in order to avoid demand and supply
fluctuations
Warehouses needs to preserve the goods and to minimize the risk of damage
due to natural factors
Need to have proper system for identification, Sorting and maintaining the
record of material
Have an effective inventory tracking system
Layout and routing methods for warehouse
discusses aspects of order picking in
warehouses. Various new methods are
introduced to determine efficient sequences in
which products have to be retrieved from
storage. Routing is a path in which you pass all
DESCRIBE
items of an order. If you want to reduce the
order picking costs to a minimum, the route
THE
have to be as short as possible. There are
several routing strategies but not all of them are
LAYOUT
suited for every situation.
The objective AND
is to minimize The common ROUTING
the average goal is to find
distance the best
METHODS
traveled per warehouse
route by the layout
order pickers.
The layout design concerns two sub-
DESCRIBE problems:
1. Facility layout problem; it concerns the
THE decision of where to locate various
departments (receiving, picking, storage,
LAYOUT sorting, and shipping). The common
objective to minimize the handling cost.
AND ROU 2. Internal layout design/aisle
configuration problem: it concerns the
TING determination of the number of blocks, and
the number, length and width of aisles in
each block of a picking area. Literature on
METHODS layout design for low-level manual order-
picking systems is not abundant.
Routing Methods
In practice, the problem of routing order
pickers in a warehouse is mainly solved by
using heuristics. This is due to some
disadvantages of optimal routing in
practice.
DESCRIBE THE S-shape Heuristic
LAYOUT AND RO This is the simplest heuristic for routing
order pickers. Any aisle containing at least
UTING METHODS one pick is traversed entirely. Aisles without
picks are not entered. From the last visited
aisle, the order picker returns to the depot.
Return Method
In this, order pickers enter and leave each
aisle from the same end. Only aisles with
pickers are visited.
DESCRIBE
THE LAYOUT AND ROUTING
METHODS
Midpoint method
It divides the warehouse into two areas. Picks in the front half are
accessed from the front cross aisle and picks in the back half are
accessed from the back cross aisle. The order picker traverse to the back
half by either the last or the first aisle. This method performs better than
S-shape method when the number of picks per aisle is small
Largest Gap Strategy
It is similar to the midpoint strategy except that an order picker enters an
aisle as fa the largest gap within an aisle, instead of the midpoint. The
gap represents the separation between any two adjacent picks, between
the first pick and the front aisle or between the last pick and the last
aisle. If the largest gap is between two adjacent picks, the order picker
performs a return route from both ends of the aisle. Otherwise, a return
route from either the front or back aisle is used. The largest gap method
always outperforms the midpoint method. However, from an
implementation point of view, the midpoint method is simpler.
Combined heuristic
For the combined heuristic, aisles with picks are either entirely traversed
or entered and left at the same end. However, for each visited aisle, the
choice is made by using dynamic programming
Agility logistics integrates
EXPLAIN DESIGN warehousing and distribution with
AND CONTROL OF the advanced systems and
WAREHOUSE OF
SOME COMPANY technology, as well as Value Added
AND PROPOSE THE Services to enhance the Supply
GOOD PRACTICES IN chain to meet customer precise
THE LIGHT OF goals and requirements.
RESEARCH ARTICLE.
AGILITY
GENERAL
INFORMATION
Service centers located in major cities across
Pakistan
Fleet of more than 250 vehicles
Technology-driven warehousing facilities with exceed
WMS
Temperature-controlled, refrigerated, and open-area
facilities
Value-added services: shrink-wrapping, palletizing,
repacking, bundling, assemble-to-order, labeling.
Benefits:
Reduced overhead
Increased cash flow
Inventory visibility
WAREHOUSE
WORK FLOW
Order processing by customer
Receiving and Put away
Storage
Shipping
ORDER
PROCESS BY
CUSTOMER
Customer process order through
ERP.
They submit order in SAP.
Agility receive order in WMS.
Both SAP and WMS interlinked
through EDI (Electronic data
interchange).
RECEIVING &
PUT AWAY
Order receive through RFI guns.
Manual receiving also done
through
“Receiving receipt”
Then it moves through hand lifter
in storage area.
STORAGE
Shipment stores on dedicated
SKU.
SKU is Pallet.
SKUs are dedicated due to
multiple product storage facility.
All SKUs have a code on it.
Material Handling Equipment
use to store goods on racks.
MHE: Fork Lifter, Stacker, Reach
Truck
SHIPPING
Receive dispatch order through email.
Schedule Delivery
Load vehicle
Check commodity
WMS Update
Receive • Receive goods
Identify • Identify goods
Dispatch • Dispatch goods to storage
WAREHOUS
Hold • Hold goods
E
Pick • Pick goods ACTIVITIES
Marshal • Marshal the shipment
Dispatch • Dispatch the shipments
• Operate an information
Operate system
WAP ON AGILITY
WAREHOUSING
Customer • Orders received are in pallet
Order One pallet contains one family order
•
• Order classification in WMS as ‘a pallet pick order’
profiling Cross docking for different products
•
• Storage according to item popularity
Item activity • C&P, Bonus, Lemon Max, Servis storage near the shipping
area due to high volume shipping
profiling • Items of one product makes one order
• Separate storage area of assembling materials
Inventor • More than 6000 SKU’s
y • All product items have
WAP ON
dedicated storage location
profiling
AGILITY
WAREHOU
SING
• Storage of high volume
Calenda shipping products near
shipping area (C&P, bonus
r stock tristar, lemon Max, Servis
shoes)
profiling • Peak hours of operations is in
early hours
Muhammad Arif Hassan
F2019273010
Anum Iqbal
F2019273036
THANKS Asad Mukhtar
F2019273017
Ayesha Shvaiz
F2010273011
