An Enhanced Bucket Brigade Order Picking System with a Conveyor

Bucket brigade order picking systems (OPSs) exhibit high operational productivity due to their self-adjusting characteristic without requiring management intervention. However, the unproductive travel behaviors of pickers can impact productivity, particularly when the OPS handles a large number of small-sized orders that lead pickers to walk long distances to pick a few items. This study proposes an OPS to mitigate unnecessary walking behaviors of pickers in bucket brigade OPSs. The proposed OPS incorporates a conveyor system to assist pickers in transporting totes that have completed order picking to the unloading station and to introduce new empty totes. By doing so, the proposed OPS reduces the average total walking time cost by 36.64% and increases productivity by 9.65% in the designed simulation experiments.