Operations Research 2025
Abstract Submission

2452. New Heuristics for Routing Problems in the E-Commerce Era

Invited abstract in session TC-4: GOR PhD Awards, stream PC Stream.

Thursday, 11:45-13:15
Room: H6

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Maximilian Löffler

Abstract

In the e-commerce era, efficient order fulfillment processes in distribution centers have become a key success factor. One novel technology investigated in this thesis to streamline these processes is robot-assisted order picking. In these systems, human order pickers are supported by autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), which carry bins for collecting picking orders, autonomously move through the warehouse, and wait in front of a shelf containing a requested stock keeping unit (SKU). Once a picker has approached a waiting AMR and placed the requested SKU into the respective bin, AMR and picker may separate and move toward other picking positions. In this way, pickers continuously move between different waiting AMRs without having to return to the depot. This work treats the coordination of multiple AMRs and multiple pickers to minimize the makespan. It proposes a heuristic method for the deterministic case that can handle the requirements of large e-commerce fulfillment centers and successfully solves instances with more than one thousand picking positions. Based on the obtained solutions, the performance of our picking system is compared with the traditional warehouse setup without AMR support. We find that largely improved makespans can be expected. In addition, we analyze the effects of stochastic picking times. The ripple effect caused by stochastic picking times, in which a single delay may cascade through a tightly synchronized schedule and deteriorate picking performance, can be effectively mitigated by separating the workforce into smaller subgroups.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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