A stock location rule for a low level picker-to-part system

This paper deals with the problem of assigning warehouse space to inventory items in a low level picker-to-part system. Recognizing the importance of weights in material handling activities in warehouse, a linear programming model is developed with the objective of minimizing the workload required for order picking operations. It is proved that the stock location rule proposed in this paper generates an optimal solution for the model. Compared with the well known cube-per-order index (COI) rule, it is shown that the proposed rule is substantially better from the view point of human safety with some sacrifice of throughput.