Human-Centered and Socially Sustainable Warehousing Processes: How Workload-Related Experience Can Mitigate the Negative Performance Effects of Work Intensity

Manual picker-to-parts order picking systems remain predominant in retail warehousing and have been identified as one of the comparatively most labor-intensive processes. While previous studies have delved into the effects of work intensity and worker experience on performance, they have typically examined each construct separately while neglecting workload-related experience. Given that the interaction remains under-explored, we here investigate how workload-related experience could possibly mitigate the negative performance effects of work intensity. We obtain a unique longitudinal real-world retail warehouse data set including 1,739,352 storage location visits performed by 74 order pickers from January to April 2023. We apply a mixed-effects model allowing for random intercepts for each order picker and utilize order picking task performance time as our dependent variable. We find that work intensity increases task performance time at increasing rates and that workload-related experience can mitigate this effect. Our research informs operations managers under which conditions they can capitalize on the positive effects of workload-related experience while mitigating the negative consequences of work intensity.