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EFFICIENT ALGORITHMS FOR TRAVELLING SALESMAN PROBLEMS ARISING IN WAREHOUSE ORDER PICKING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2015

H. CHARKHGARD*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia email Hadi.Charkhgard@uon.edu.au
M. SAVELSBERGH
Affiliation:
H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0205, USA email Martin.Savelsbergh@isye.gatech.edu
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Abstract

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We investigate two routing problems that arise when order pickers traverse an aisle in a warehouse. The routing problems can be viewed as Euclidean travelling salesman problems with points on two parallel lines. We show that if the order picker traverses only a section of the aisle and then returns, then an optimal solution can be found in linear time, and if the order picker traverses the entire aisle, then an optimal solution can be found in quadratic time. Moreover, we show how to approximate the routing cost in linear time by computing a minimum spanning tree for the points on the parallel lines.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2015 Australian Mathematical Society 

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