Principles and Fundamentals of the PRP: Time and Distance Matrices for Algorithms in the Picker Routing Problem

This chapter presents the principles and fundamentals of the Picker Routing Problem (PRP) to improve the understanding of warehouse routing problems and solution algorithms. This study describes the main considerations for the PRP, formulation of distance and time matrices between storage positions for 2D and 3D warehouses, and solution approaches. The chapter describes the calculation of time and distance for warehouses considering horizontal and vertical movements through numerical examples. Three algorithms based on genetic algorithms, tabu search, and local search are proposed to solve the PRP, showing variable performance compared to the s-shape routing policy depending on the warehouse configuration and picking list size. The study concludes that distance and time matrices represent convenient tools for practitioners to generate the primary input for PRP solution methods.