Optimization of order batching in a picking system with Carousels

International audienceCarrousels are Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems frequently used in warehouses. The performance of warehouses with carousels is highly correlated to the order picking performance. The order picking is one of the main activities in warehouse management, consisting of retrieving the required products from their storage location to fulfil customers’ orders. A critical operation for the order picking efficiency is the order batching, namely how to regroup customers’ orders into batches before the collect. In this paper, we provide an optimization model for the orders batching problem, when the products are stored in one or several carrousels, with the objective of minimizing the total completion time. We use real data in order to test and validate our models. Numerical experiments show that our model outperforms the actual batching strategy used by the considered companies