Application of metaheuristics-based clustering algorithm to item assignment in a synchronized zone order picking system

• Apply GA and PSO to assign items to storage zones based on items’ similarities.
• The co-appearance of two items in the same order is used as the similarity measure.
• Computational results indicate that PSO algorithm outperforms GA and existing algorithm.

Warehousing management policy is a crucial issue in logistic management. It must be managed effectively and efficiently to reduce the production cost as well as the customer satisfaction. Synchronized zoning system is a warehousing management policy which aims to increase the warehouse utilization and customer satisfaction by reducing the customer waiting time. This policy divides a warehouse into several zones where each zone has its own picker who can work simultaneously. Herein, item assignment plays an important role since it influences the order processing performance. This study proposes an application of metaheuristic algorithms, namely particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA), for item assignment in synchronized zoning system. The original PSO and GA algorithms are modified so that it is suitable for solving item assignment problem. The datasets with different sizes are used for method validation. Results obtained by PSO and GA are then compared with the result of an existing algorithm. The experimental results showed that PSO and GA can perform better than the existing algorithm. These results also show that PSO has better performance than GA, especially for bigger problems. It proves that item assignment policy obtained by PSO and GA has higher utilization rates than the existing algorithm.

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