Date of Award

1-1-2022

Publication Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.Sc.

Department

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering

Keywords

Order picking, Storage location assignment problem

Supervisor

G. Zhang

Supervisor

X. Guo

Rights

info:eu-repo/semantics/embargoedAccess

Abstract

Order picking is the most laborious operation in a warehouse. Motivated by a real-world problem, this thesis developed a multi-objective model for the storage location assignment problem which assigns SKUs to storage locations such that the travel distance to pick a set of orders and the cost of damages associated with the order are minimized. This problem was formulated as a quadratic assignment problem and solved by CPLEX for the small and medium scale problems. A simple heuristic was introduced to solve for the large scale problem. This research refers to the warehouse operations of a large food retailer, Metro Inc. to understand the warehouse operations and improve the existing warehouse layout. However, the methods and results developed are not limited to the company. The results of the testing based on the industry partner proved that the multi-objective model and heuristic could significantly increase the efficiency of the order picking operation.

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