An Approach for Picking Optimization in Automated Warehouse

This paper presents a scheduling problem that arises in an automatic storage/retrieval warehouse system AS/RS involving the scheduling of the stacker crane load operations. The loads are considered as jobs, the pallets of a load are seen as the job´s operations. The forklifts are the machines. The optimization of sequence allows minimizing the idle time of the warehouse´s equipments. A procedure based on genetic algorithms is presented to sequence the pallets of a set of loads that are prepared simultaneously. The genetic algorithm includes specific knowledge of the problem to improve its efficiency.