ORDER BATCHING ALGORITHMS FOR A MAN-ON-BOARD AUTOMATED STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL-SYSTEM

This paper deals with an order processing problem in a man-on-board automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS). Since an optimal solution is almost impossible to obtain even for a moderate sized problem, we present new heuristic algorithms based on cluster analysis. The algorithms process the orders by batching some of them according to the value of the similarity cofficient which is defined in terms of attribute vectors. To find the minimum travel time for each batch of orders, the travelling salesman algorithm is employed. Through computer simulation, the performances of the algorithms are compared with those of the previous studies. The results indicate that some algorithms developed perform substantially better than the others.