Optimal Order Picking Route in Automotive Part Warehouse using Integer Programming

Abstract

Many factories are facing the problem of transportation time consumption. In the car assembly line, there are more than ten thousand parts to pick for assembling a single car. Order picking is the process which transport and collect the items in the warehouse to serve both internal and external customer. Consequently, this is generally known as the most consumed time in warehouse activities, especially in the traveling activity. Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) is the technique which deals with finding the shortest route. This paper presents a mathematical model of TSP to minimize the traveled distance of pickers and provide the optimal sequence of order picking. Binary integer programming (BIP) is applied to solve the model. The MIP library is used as the problem solver which operates in Python. The case studies are introduced to demonstrate the solution quality of the proposed model. The result shows that order picking route is optimized by decreasing the distance traveled.