A genetic algorithm for minimizing energy consumption in warehouses

Green supply chain management is generally defined as integration of green thinking and environmental issues into the whole supply chain operations like product design, manufacturing process, warehousing, distribution etc. Within this context green principles should be adopted in warehouse management to minimize negative impact on the environment. In warehouse operations, picking must be analyzed attentively which is widely studied in literature for minimizing service time levels because of its close relation to the higher costs. The efficiency of picking in warehouses mainly depends on storage assignment policy that directly affects picking performance in warehouses. In this paper, picking operation in warehouses is studied to minimize energy consumption with proper storage policy other than service time. Genetic algorithm (GA) is proposed to solve the problem and numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance of the GA. Results show that, the GA gives efficient solutions to the problem.