Column generation for scheduling mobile composite robots in warehouses

Abstract

As the e-commerce industry ascends, the strain on warehouse operation to manage order processing has intensified significantly. This paper pioneers the integration of mobile composite robot (MCR) for order assigning and path planning in warehouse. A mathematical model is established with the objective function of minimizing the time to complete orders. An algorithm based on column generation is developed, with dynamic programming and other acceleration strategies applied to improve the efficiency of the pricing problem. Numerical experiments show that the algorithm’s performance matches that of CPLEX in small-scale instances and exhibits the capacity to handle 50 orders in just 5 min. Additional experiments are conducted to substantiate the efficiency of our proposed algorithm and to offer valuable managerial insights to practitioners who are implementing MCR technology in warehouse environments.