Abstract
The Order Batching Problem (OBP) can be considered a family of optimization problems related to the retrieval of goods in a warehouse. The original and most extended version of the problem consists in minimizing the total time needed to collect a group of orders. However, this version has been evolved with many other variants, where the restrictions and/or the objective function might change. In this paper, we deal with the Online Order Batching Problem (OOBP) version, which introduces the novelty to the OBP of considering orders that have arrived to the warehouse once the retrieval of previous orders has started. This family of problems has been deeply studied by the heuristic community in the past. Notice, that solving any variant of the OBP include two important activities: grouping the orders into batches (batching) and determining the route to follow by a picker to retrieve the items within the same batch (routing). We review the most outstanding proposals in the literature for the OOBP variant and we propose a new version of a competitive Variable Neighborhood Search (VNS) algorithm to tackle the problem.
This work has been partially founded by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad with grant refs. TIN2015-65460-C2-2-P., MTM2015-63710-P.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Albareda-Sambola, M., Alonso-Ayuso, A., Molina, E., De Blas, C.S.: Variable neighborhood search for order batching in a warehouse. Asia-Pac. J. Oper. Res. 26(5), 655–683 (2009)
Azadnia, A.H., Taheri, S., Ghadimi, P., Mat Saman, M.Z., Wong, K.Y.: Order batching in warehouses by minimizing total tardiness: a hybrid approach of weighted association rule mining and genetic algorithms. Sci. World J. 2013, (2013)
Clarke, G., Wright, J.W.: Scheduling of vehicles from a central depot to a number of delivery points. Oper. Res. 12(4), 568–581 (1964)
De Koster, R., Roodbergen, K.J., Van Voorden, R.: Reduction of walking time in the distribution center of de bijenkorf. In: Speranza, M.G., Stähly, P. (eds.) New Trends in Distribution Logistics. Lecture Notes in economics and mathematical systems, vol. 480, pp. 215–234. Springer, Heidelberg (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-58568-5_11
Duarte, A., Pantrigo, J.J., Pardo, E.G., Mladenovic, N.: Multi-objective variable neighborhood search: an application to combinatorial optimization problems. J. Glob. Optim. 63(3), 515–536 (2015)
Duarte, A., Pantrigo, J.J., Pardo, E.G., Sánchez-Oro, J.: Parallel variable neighbourhood search strategies for the cutwidth minimization problem. IMA J. Manag. Math. 27(1), 55–73 (2013)
Gademann, N., Velde, V.D.S.: Order batching to minimize total travel time in a parallel-aisle warehouse. IIE Trans. 37(1), 63–75 (2005)
Hansen, P., Mladenović, N.: Variable neighborhood search: principles and applications. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 130(3), 449–467 (2001)
Hansen, P., Mladenović, N., Moreno-Pérez, J.A.: Variable neighbourhood search: methods and applications. Ann. Oper. Res. 175(1), 367–407 (2010)
Henn, S.: Algorithms for on-line order batching in an order picking warehouse. Comput. Oper. Res. 39(11), 2549–2563 (2012)
Henn, S., Koch, S., Doerner, K.F., Strauss, C., Wäscher, G.: Metaheuristics for the order batching problem in manual order picking systems. Bus. Res. 3(1), 82–105 (2010)
Koster, M.B.M.D., der Poort, E.S.V., Wolters, M.: Efficient orderbatching methods in warehouses. Int. J. Prod. Res. 37(7), 1479–1504 (1999)
Menéndez, B., Pardo, E.G., Sánchez-Oro, J., Duarte, A.: Parallel variable neighborhood search for the min-max order batching problem. Int. Trans. Oper. Res. 24(3), 635–662 (2017)
Menéndez, B., Bustillo, M., Pardo, E.G., Duarte, A.: General variable neighborhood search for the order batching and sequencing problem. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 263(1), 82–93 (2017)
Menéndez, B., Pardo, E.G., Alonso-Ayuso, A., Molina, E., Duarte, A.: Variable neighborhood search strategies for the order batching problem. Comput. Oper. Res. 78, 500–512 (2017)
Menéndez, B., Pardo, E.G., Duarte, A., Alonso-Ayuso, A., Molina, E.: General variable neighborhood search applied to the picking process in a warehouse. Electron. Notes Discret Math. 47, 77–84 (2015)
Mladenović, N., Hansen, P.: Variable neighborhood search. Comput. Oper. Res. 24(11), 1097–1100 (1997)
Pan, C.H., Liu, S.Y.: A comparative study of order batching algorithms. Omega 23(6), 691–700 (1995)
Pardo, E.G., Mladenović, N., Pantrigo, J.J., Duarte, A.: Variable formulation search for the cutwidth minimization problem. Appl. Soft Comput. 13(5), 2242–2252 (2013)
Pérez-Rodríguez, R., Hernández-Aguirre, A., Jöns, S.: A continuous estimation of distribution algorithm for the online order-batching problem. Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol. 79(1), 569–588 (2015)
Rosenwein, M.B.: An application of cluster analysis to the problem of locating items within a warehouse. IIE Trans. 26(1), 101–103 (1994)
Rubrico, J., Higashi, T., Tamura, H., Ota, J.: Online rescheduling of multiple picking agents for warehouse management. Robot. Comput.-Integr. Manuf. 27(1), 62–71 (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Gil-Borrás, S., Pardo, E.G., Alonso-Ayuso, A., Duarte, A. (2019). New VNS Variants for the Online Order Batching Problem. In: Sifaleras, A., Salhi, S., Brimberg, J. (eds) Variable Neighborhood Search. ICVNS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11328. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15843-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15843-9_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15842-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15843-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)