Graph-based heuristics for operational planning and scheduling problem in automatic picking system

Abstract

In this paper, we study an operational planning and scheduling problem in an automatic picking system. This problem was introduced as a practical benchmark problem arising in logistics and involves assignment and scheduling tasks. We first show the NP-hardness of the problem. We then propose a graph-based heuristic algorithm for computing a good schedule of requests for a given assignment of products. The computational results for benchmark instances show that good schedules of requests are obtained in short computation time.

Keywords

• scheduling
• automatic picking system
• logistic industry
• graph theory
• combinatorial optimization