EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF ORDER PICKING STRATEGIES ON THE ORDER FULFILMENT TIME: A SIMULATION STUDY

Abstract

A Distribution Centre (DC) is considered a critical node in providing optimal customer service levels in a supply chain network. Therefore, improving order fulfilment time at DCs becomes critical to achieve world-class operations. One of the key processes involved in order fulfilment is that of picking, the activity that consumes most time when fulfilling an order. This article presents the analysis of an actual system that stores products in a random fashion and releases orders following FIFO rules. A simulation model is built, and two scenarios analysed. The first one (baseline) reflects the current DC operation. The second scenario (projected) includes the implementation of three picking strategies aimed at improving system performance: slotting, wave picking, and expedite picking (balancing picker’s workload). The following KPIs are used to compare both scenarios: order fulfilment lead-time, picks per man-hour, average picking time per order, average time to pack an order. Simulation results show that the systematic implementation of the proposed strategies achieves substantial improvements, not only in the order fulfilment time (54% reduction), but also in the number of orders completed in less than 8 hours, the number of orders picked per man hour and a reduction of pickers idle time.

Keywords

• customer service level
• discrete event simulation
• order fulfilment
• picking policies