Trade-offs in warehousing storage location reassignment

In the low-level picker-to-parts warehouses the order picking is the most time- and cost consuming process. The performance indicator for order picking is lead time. The system can be considered efficient if these lead times can be kept low, but this is heavily influenced by the storage location assignment in the warehouse, the routing, and the warehouse layout. The objective of this research is to investigate in what cases and to what extent reassignment and repositioning tasks following efficiency deterioration as well as seek answers to how to minimise these costly tasks and maintain a near-ideal storage location assignment. To solve this problem, an intelligent system concept is presented, which aims to support the warehouse operator in making replenishment decisions, which picking storage to replenish based on the current rotation of item, and which products to repositioning, while maintaining a near ideal storage location assignment. The aim of this paper is to highlight the potential decision points and circumstances, when adaptive storage location reassignment would be necessary and how this concept can help everyday warehouse logistics.