Journal
IIE TRANSACTIONS
Volume 41, Issue 3, Pages 232-246Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC
DOI: 10.1080/07408170802108518
Keywords
Distribution center; order picking system; blocking; Markov chain
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In designing an Order Picking System (OPS) with multiple pickers, the designing (or selection) of several parameters (e.g., width of aisles, storage system and picking strategy) is dependent on the blocking that occurs between pickers. In this paper analytical models to estimate blocking in an OPS that has picking aisles wide enough to allow pickers to pass other pickers in the aisle are developed. In such OPSs, pickers can experience blocking at a pick face when two or more pickers need to pick at the same pick face. The developed models are compared with simulation, with results indicating that the proposed models are sufficiently accurate. Test results suggest that when pickers pick one SKU at a pick face, blocking is less in a wide-aisle OPS compared to that in a narrow-aisle OPS. However, when pickers pick more than one SKU at a pick face, blocking increases monotonically with an increase in the number of SKUs picked. The last result is significant since it highlights the importance of the proposed model that considers the variation in the time the picker is stopped to pick.
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