Warehouse Design and Order Picking Algorithms for Apparel Industry

Warehouse management has a critical role for success for the apparel industry. It is important because it ensures effective inventory control, efficient order fulfillment, optimal space utilization, labor efficiency, cost reduction, and customer satisfaction, which all directly effects the bottom line. A particularly important part of this optimization includes the design of the warehouse. In this study, various product placement and order-picking scenarios have been studied in combination with numerous warehouse designs and implementation is presented for a large apparel company. The implementation was done in the warehouse of one of the largest Retail Textile Company, specializing in women’s apparel production. First a comprehensive literature review was conducted for this study. As a result of the literature review, different picking and routing algorithms were combined. The solution was developed first by building a simulation model. Different placement scenarios, scenarios for assigning orders to workers, and routing algorithms are presented in conjunction with warehouse designs. The aim is to reduce the total product placement and picking times and increase the efficiency of workers by utilizing different placement and picking algorithms. With this study, the total placement and picking time is reduced by 36.56% compared to the current system.