'Periodica Polytechnica Budapest University of Technology and Economics'
Abstract
In profit-oriented environments, such as warehousing in the automotive
industry and its suppliers, the minimization of labour costs, and thus the
flexibility of labour force is an increasingly important issue. Such an
operating policy requires effective capacity planning methods to determine
the number of personnel and equipment per activity and scheduling procedures
to define the sequence of tasks by considering their strict deadlines. In the
following, the use of a discrete event simulation model for multi-criteria
scheduling optimization of order picking activities in an automotive parts
warehouse with genetic algorithm (GA) is presented. The operative planning
system consists of a database, a discrete event simulation model, an
application for capacity estimation and a scheduling algorithm. The system
was designed to support operative warehouse management personnel in order to
pick process scheduling and planning