Order-picking methods: Improving order-picking efficiency

The order-picking, process of retrieving items from storage locations in response to a specific customer request, is the most laborious and the most costly activity in a typical warehouse. This is especially a case in the conventional warehouses, with almost 90% of total time spent on order-picking activities and 55% of all operating cost attributed to order-picking. As the 50% of total order picking time is spent on traveling, organizational changes and application of various order-picking methods to reduce travel distances could lead to significant improvements. In this paper three groups of order-picking methods are analyzed: routing, storage and orderbatching. In order to determine the potential order-picker travel distance savings using particular method or their combinations, the extensive simulation is done. The persented results showed up to 80% possible reduction of travel distances using appropriate combination of orderpicking methods.