Using the Efficient Frontier to Obtain the Best Solution for the Storage Location Assignment Problem

Abstract

The main variables that influence the efficiency of a warehouse are the use of space and the order picking distance. In the literature, there are proposals to add the costs with space and order picking in order to evaluate each alternative for storage location assignment. However, there were problems with the adoption of this methodology, including difficulties in determining the costs and tradeoffs between them. These difficulties can result in solutions that are suboptimal. Based on these facts, this paper proposes a class-based storage process and storage location assignment by a cube-per-order index (COI) that analyzes the space required and the total order picking distance by Pareto-optimal calculations. The efficient frontier possibilities allow the reduction of the set of alternatives, and the DM can analyze only the alternatives on efficient frontier.