A clustering algorithm for item assignment in a synchronized zone order picking system

In a synchronized zone order picking system, all the zones process the same order simultaneously. There may be some idle time when the zone pickers wait until all the pickers complete the current order. This paper develops a heuristic algorithm to balance the workload among all pickers so that the utilization of the order picking system is improved and to reduce the time needed for fulfilling each requested order. A similarity measurement, using customer orders, of any two items is first presented for measuring the co-appearance of both items in the same order. With this similarity measurement, a natural cluster model, which is a relaxation of the well-studied NP-hard homogeneous cluster model, is constructed. The heuristic algorithm is then proposed to solve the model for locating all the items into distinct zones. Finally, empirical data and simulation experiments verify that the objectives of the item cluster model are achieved. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.