Information system for operation planning in a warehouse

Nejc Škofič (2012) Information system for operation planning in a warehouse. EngD thesis.

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Abstract

Most of the warehouses employ "picker-to-parts" order picking system. This system is usually implemented so that a picker himself plans the order of picking and the route through the warehouse. This requires little warehouse automation but on the other hand pickers do all the work required for order fulfillment. Tipically their picking plans are far from optimal. Time spent for picker movement can be as much as half of the total working time. With optimized working plan and efficient pickers' routing it is possible to lower required movement time and thus optimize order picking in a warehouse. In this thesis we developed information system for optimizing order picking process in cooperation with the 3R.TIM company and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Faculty of computer and information science, University of Ljubljana. Our solution is an additional system to warehouse management systems which is capable of warehouse modeling and running of arbitrary planners. New planners can be easily implemented in the developed framework for planner writing and running. We developed a testing environment and a user interface with visualization of plan execution for easy planner testing and plan visualization. With our information system it is possible to optimize order picking even in warehouses where such optimization was not available because of "picker-to-parts" order picking system.

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