Investigation of the influences of article and order structure on the dimensioning of zone-picking-systems

"First, the order picking then the stock planning - In the order picking area the most stuff is usually employed. Here the customer service and the logistics quality are decided. The highest costs incur here." [7]. The planning of an order picking system is characterized by the complexity of the system. Through the use of simulation in rough planning, more precise statements about the performance of order picking systems can be made. The planning process with the PlanKom tool, which uses the simulation, is described at the beginning of this paper. Focus is the investigation from the socalled zone-picking. The planning of such a system raises the question of how long a zone should be, so that performance is maximized. In this context, the influence of article structure, storage strategy, order structure and number of zones on the performance is examined. For this study 1.080 simulation runs have been performed. The results show that the article structure has a large impact on performance by picking in a small number of zones. With increasing number of zones, the influence of the article structure is less. Furthermore, the results show that the storage strategy "concentration of fast moving parts" has a higher performance than a chaotic storage strategy.