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EFFICIENT ALGORITHMS FOR TRAVELLING SALESMAN PROBLEMS ARISING IN WAREHOUSE ORDER PICKING

Part of: Computational number theory Operations research and management science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2015

H. CHARKHGARD Open the ORCID record for H. CHARKHGARD [Opens in a new window]  and
M. SAVELSBERGH
H. CHARKHGARD*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia email Hadi.Charkhgard@uon.edu.au
M. SAVELSBERGH
Affiliation:
H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0205, USA email Martin.Savelsbergh@isye.gatech.edu
*
✉Hadi.Charkhgard@uon.edu.au
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Abstract

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We investigate two routing problems that arise when order pickers traverse an aisle in a warehouse. The routing problems can be viewed as Euclidean travelling salesman problems with points on two parallel lines. We show that if the order picker traverses only a section of the aisle and then returns, then an optimal solution can be found in linear time, and if the order picker traverses the entire aisle, then an optimal solution can be found in quadratic time. Moreover, we show how to approximate the routing cost in linear time by computing a minimum spanning tree for the points on the parallel lines.

Keywords

order batchingorder pickingpicker routingtravelling salesman problemminimum spanning tree problem

MSC classification

Primary: 90B06: Transportation, logistics
Secondary: 11Y16: Algorithms; complexity
Type
Research Article
Information
The ANZIAM Journal , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , October 2015 , pp. 166 - 174
Copyright
© 2015 Australian Mathematical Society 

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