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Inventory allocation to robotic mobile-rack and picker-to-part warehouses at minimum order-splitting and replenishment costs

  • S.I. : Scalable Optimization and Decision Making in OR
  • Published:
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Abstract

A novel part-to-picker warehouse with robotic mobile racks is spreading recently because of its advantages in picking multi-item e-commerce orders. However, warehouse managers may suffer the situation that the new warehouse and an old one coexist in a distribution center. Due to their respective capacities, any warehouse cannot hold all the stock keeping units (SKUs). How to allocate SKUs to the two warehouses is an important decision. It has a significant influence on the cost of combining the SKUs that have to be picked from two warehouses for customer orders. The problem is formulated by using an innovative virtual-warehouse-based idea, the NP-hardness of the problem is proved, and a hybrid algorithm by alternating between the large neighborhood search and local search is developed. Some effective data-driven strategies are proposed to improve the most time-consuming modules of the algorithm. Extensive case studies are conducted and good performances of the algorithm are shown when it is compared with the MIP solver on small-sized cases, and an adapted tabu search and a simulated annealing algorithm on large-sized real-world cases. The sensitivity analyses on key parameters of the problem are made and related managerial insights are obtained.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and invaluable contributions to enhance the presentation of this paper. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71971036, 71931009, 71871035), the Major Program of Key Disciplines in Dalian (No. 2019J11CY002), the Key R&D project of Liaoning Provincial Department of Science and Technology (No. 2020JH2/10100042), and the MOE Layout Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 19YJA630084).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Maritime Economics and Management, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, 116026, China

    Zheng Wang

  2. College of Transportation Engineering, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, 116026, China

    Wei Xu

  3. School of Economics and Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116026, China

    Xiangpei Hu

  4. School of Economics and Management, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing, 400074, China

    Yong Wang

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  1. Zheng Wang
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  2. Wei Xu
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  3. Xiangpei Hu
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  4. Yong Wang
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Correspondence to Xiangpei Hu.

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Wang, Z., Xu, W., Hu, X. et al. Inventory allocation to robotic mobile-rack and picker-to-part warehouses at minimum order-splitting and replenishment costs. Ann Oper Res 316, 467–491 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-021-04190-1

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