Space allocation and aisle positioning for an industrial pick-to-belt system

Distribution centres (DCs) are a key component in supply chains. In order to respond quickly to customer demands, most DCs use a fast-pick area where order picking can be executed efficiently. In these areas, the amount of space allocated to each product is of great importance, as it determines the number of replenishments required to guarantee product availability, thus avoiding interruptions in the order picking. The obvious assumption is that the performance of DCs could be improved by using simple strategies such as assigning more space to products having the highest demand. However, as this paper shows, the practical constraints related to the need for aisles granting safe and easy access to storage locations make designing fast-pick areas difficult. A parameter-free, two-phase algorithm based on product-adding heuristics combined with a space-reduction heuristic is proposed to solve this design problem. When applied to real data provided by our industrial partner, this heuristic generated considerable time savings.