Innovative Modular Approach based on Vehicle Routing Problem and Ant Colony Optimization for Order Splitting in Real Warehouses
A crucial part to any warehouse workflow is the process of order picking. Orders can significantly vary in the number of items, mass, volume and the total path needed to collect all the items. Some orders can be picked by just one worker, while others are required to be split up and shrunk down, so that they can be assigned to multiple workers. This paper describes the complete process of optimal order splitting. The process consists of evaluating if a given order requires to be split, determining the number of orders it needs to be split into, assigning items for every worker and optimizing the order picking routes. The complete order splitting process can be used both with and without the logistic data (mass and volume), but having logistic data improves the accuracy. Final step of the algorithm is reduction to Vehicle Routing Problem where the total number of vehicles is known beforehand. The process described in this paper is implemented in some of the largest warehouses in Bosnia and Herzegovina.