Exploring the Integration of General Variable Neighborhood Search with Exact Procedures for the Optimization of the Order Batching Problem

This paper studies the influence of combining exact algorithms with heuristic procedures for the optimization of the Order Batching Problem. The problem looks to minimize the time that an operator needs to pick all items from a set of orders within a warehouse, when all orders are known before starting the picking process. It involves solving different tasks, such as batching the orders in groups or routing the picker through the warehouse. In this proposal a previous General Variable Neighborhood Search proposal for the batching task has been integrated with exact algorithms for the routing task. Several experiments have been designed to test the performance of the constructed algorithms.