A Perturbation Analysis and Sample Path Optimization Algorithm for Warehouse Order Batch Size Problem
Order picking is the most labor-intensive operation in warehouses with manual systems, and a very capitalintensive operation in warehouses with automated systems. Order picking e.ciency can often only be achieved by order batching. The past warehousing literature dealing with order batching usually directly gives batch sizes although it a.ects the system performance. This paper is one of the earliest papers to search optimal batch sizes in a general warehouse with consideration of stochastic demand. We provide a stochastic optimization algorithm to search the optimal batch sizes with an objective of minimizing the operation cost of warehousing service providers. In this algorithm, we employ a sample path optimization algorithm as basic computation procedure and use perturbation analysis technique to estimate gradients. Compared with existing two methods to search the batch size values, our algorithm can provide the optimal batch size faster.
Perturbation Analysis Sample Path Optimization Stochastic Optimization Batch Size
Yeming GONG Ren′e DE KOSTER
RSM Erasmus University,Rotterdam,the Netherlands
国际会议
北京
英文
2007-05-30（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）