Warehouses have always been an essential part of supply chains, but despite their fundamental role they were not seen as especially mission critical. With the advent of e-commerce, same-day ...deliveries, omni-channel retailing, and global supply chain disruptions, however, this assessment has changed, and today’s warehouses have evolved to technology-enriched fulfillment factories with strategic relevance. This paper traces the evolution of picker-to-parts and parts-to-picker warehouses from basic systems of the first generation, via extended system setups of the second generation, up to state-of-the-art robotized distribution centers of the third generation. Specifically, we highlight the most influential scientific contributions of the operations research (OR) community within each generation that have supported this evolution over the past 50 years. Beyond the historical perspective, we outline an agenda for the warehousing research of the future.
•We structure the evolution of warehousing systems into three generations.•We survey most influential research contributions for each generation.•A research agenda for future warehousing generations is outlined.
With the advent of e-commerce and its fast-delivery expectations, efficiently routing pickers in warehouses and distribution centers has received renewed interest. The processes and the resulting ...routing problems in this environment are diverse. For instance, not only human pickers have to be routed but also autonomous picking robots or mobile robots that accompany human pickers. Traditional picker routing, in which a single picker has to visit a given set of picking positions in a picker-to-parts process, can be modeled as the classical Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). The more involved processes of e-commerce fulfillment, however, require solving more complex TSP variants, such as the clustered, generalized, or prize-collecting TSP. In this context, our paper provides two main contributions: We systematically survey the large number of TSP variants that are known in the routing literature and check whether meaningful applications in warehouses exist that correspond to the respective TSP variant. If they do, we survey the existing research and investigate the computational complexity of the TSP variant in the warehousing context. Previous research has shown that the classical TSP is efficiently solvable in the parallel-aisle structure of warehouses. Consequently, some TSP variants also turn out to be efficiently solvable in the warehousing context, whereas others remain NP-hard. We survey existing complexity results, provide new ones, and identify future research needs.
•This paper surveys routing problems in warehouses.•We focus on variants of the TSP in warehouses.•New and old complexity results for the parallel-aisle structure are provided.•We elaborate warehouse use cases and future research needs.
Solving the Online On-Demand Warehousing Problem Ceschia, Sara; Gansterer, Margaretha; Mancini, Simona ...
Computers & operations research,
October 2024, 2024-10-00, Letnik:
170
Journal Article
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In On-Demand Warehousing, an online platform acts as a central mechanism to match unused storage space and related services offered by suppliers to customers. Storage requests can be for small ...capacities and very short commitment periods if compared to traditional leasing models. The objective of the On-Demand Warehousing Problem (ODWP) is to maximize the number of successful transactions among the collected offers and requests, considering the satisfaction of both the supply and demand side to preserve future participation to the platform. The Online ODWP can be modeled as a stochastic reservation and assignment problem, where dynamically arriving requests of customers must be rapidly assigned to suppliers. Firstly, an online stochastic combinatorial optimization framework is adapted to the Online ODWP. The key idea of this approach is to generate samples of future requests by evaluating possible allocations for the current request against these samples. In addition, expectation, consensus, and regret, and two greedy algorithms are implemented. All solution methods are compared on a dataset of realistic instances of different sizes and features, demonstrating their effectiveness compared to the oracle solutions, which are based on the assumption of perfect information about future request arrivals. A newly proposed approach of risk approximation is shown to outperform alternative algorithms on large instances. Managerial insights regarding acceptance and rejection strategies for the platform are derived. It is shown how requests with large demand, long time frame, not very long spanning time, and average compatibility degree, are very likely to be rejected in the optimal solution.
•Online On-Demand Warehousing is a stochastic reservation and assignment problem.•An online stochastic combinatorial optimization framework is adapted to the problem.•An innovative risk approximation approach is shown to outperform alternative methods.•Managerial insights about acceptance and rejection strategies are derived.
As e-commerce has become more prevalent, the required logistics operations are challenged by the greater demand for and higher complexity of order picking in warehouses. While goods-to-person (G2P) ...picking systems, such as robotic mobile fulfillment systems, are becoming popular, there are still challenges in G2P systems, including the unstable performance of human picking due to fatigue and human errors, and the constrained mobility of robots. To tackle these challenges, this article presents a new robotic storage and order picking system, which we call RubikCell. It leverages the strengths of existing warehouse systems and incorporates automatic dispensing, robot-to-goods picking, and pick-while-sort operations. In RubikCell, robots are equipped with trays to store and transport items for an order, instead of moving with heavy pods to workstations as in G2P systems. In addition, the concept of cellular warehousing (CW)-inspired by cellular manufacturing-aims to operate a large warehouse with smaller warehousing cells. This approach reduces the substantial traveling distances of robots, as they move within their dedicated warehousing cells rather than the entire warehouse. A mathematical programming model is developed to address the cell formation problem in CW. Lastly, the implementation of CW principles in RubikCell, forming Robotic CW Systems, renders e-commerce warehousing more flexible, scalable, and reconfigurable. Numerical experiments conducted on this innovative system have confirmed the effectiveness of the cell formation method.
Data Warehousing in the Age of the Big Data will help you and your organization make the most of unstructured data with your existing data warehouse. As Big Data continues to revolutionize how we use ...data, it doesn't have to create more confusion. Expert author Krish Krishnan helps you make sense of how Big Data fits into the world of data warehousing in clear and concise detail. The book is presented in three distinct parts. Part 1 discusses Big Data, its technologies and use cases from early adopters. Part 2 addresses data warehousing, its shortcomings, and new architecture options, workloads, and integration techniques for Big Data and the data warehouse. Part 3 deals with data governance, data visualization, information life-cycle management, data scientists, and implementing a Big Data–ready data warehouse. Extensive appendixes include case studies from vendor implementations and a special segment on how we can build a healthcare information factory. Ultimately, this book will help you navigate through the complex layers of Big Data and data warehousing while providing you information on how to effectively think about using all these technologies and the architectures to design the next-generation data warehouse. * Learn how to leverage Big Data by effectively integrating it into your data warehouse. * Includes real-world examples and use cases that clearly demonstrate Hadoop, NoSQL, HBASE, Hive, and other Big Data technologies * Understand how to optimize and tune your current data warehouse infrastructure and integrate newer infrastructure matching data processing workloads and requirements
Little is known about how use patterns of medications for opioid use disorder (MOUDs) evolve from pre-incarceration to post-incarceration among incarcerated individuals with opioid use disorder. This ...article describes pre- and post-incarceration MOUD receipt during a period when naltrexone was the only type of MOUD offered in a state prison system, the Massachusetts Department of Correction (MADOC).
A retrospective cohort study of individuals with opioid use disorder who had an incarceration episode in MADOC during January 2015 to March 2019. The data source was the Massachusetts Public Health Data Warehouse, a multi-sector data platform that links individual-level data from multiple statewide datasets. We described patterns of MOUD receipt during the four weeks prior to and after an incarceration episode. Multivariable logistic regression models characterized predictors of post-incarceration MOUD receipt.
In the male sample (n=691 incarcerations), from the pre- to post-incarceration periods, receipt of buprenorphine increased (14.3 % to 18.3 %), naltrexone increased (5.0 % to 10.5 %), and methadone decreased (4.7 % to 1.7 %). Similarly, in the female sample (n=892 incarcerations), from the pre- to post-incarceration periods, receipt of buprenorphine increased (10.3 % to 12.3 %, naltrexone increased (4.5 % to 9.3 %), and methadone decreased (5.0 % to 2.9 %). Much of the post-release naltrexone receipt occurred among participants in MADOC’s pre-release naltrexone program.
MOUD receipt was low but increased slightly in the post-incarceration period. This change was driven by increases in buprenorphine and naltrexone and despite decreases in methadone.
•Medications for opioid use disorder treatment were uncommon before and after prison.•Buprenorphine and naltrexone increased post-incarceration, but methadone decreased.•Massachusetts Public Health Data Warehouse linked incarceration and health data.•White persons received more MOUD than Black persons before and after prison stays.
Warehousing in the e-commerce era: A survey Boysen, Nils; de Koster, René; Weidinger, Felix
European journal of operational research,
09/2019, Letnik:
277, Številka:
2
Journal Article
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•We survey the field of warehousing for online retailers.•Suited warehousing systems are described.•The existing literature is surveyed.•Future research challenges are identified.
E-commerce ...retailers face the challenge to assemble large numbers of time-critical picking orders each consisting of just a few order lines with low order quantities. Traditional picker-to-parts warehouses are often ill-suited for these prerequisites, so that automated warehousing systems (e.g., automated picking workstations, robots, and AGV-assisted order picking systems) are applied and organizational adaptions (e.g., mixed-shelves storage, dynamic order processing, and batching, zoning and sorting systems) are made in this branch of industry. This paper is dedicated to these warehousing systems especially suited for e-commerce retailers. We discuss suited systems, survey the relevant literature, and define future research needs.
Blockchain is a shared distributed digital ledger technology that can better facilitate data management, provenance and security, and has the potential to transform healthcare. Importantly, ...blockchain represents a data architecture, whose application goes far beyond Bitcoin - the cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain and has popularized the technology. In the health sector, blockchain is being aggressively explored by various stakeholders to optimize business processes, lower costs, improve patient outcomes, enhance compliance, and enable better use of healthcare-related data. However, critical in assessing whether blockchain can fulfill the hype of a technology characterized as 'revolutionary' and 'disruptive', is the need to ensure that blockchain design elements consider actual healthcare needs from the diverse perspectives of consumers, patients, providers, and regulators. In addition, answering the real needs of healthcare stakeholders, blockchain approaches must also be responsive to the unique challenges faced in healthcare compared to other sectors of the economy. In this sense, ensuring that a health blockchain is 'fit-for-purpose' is pivotal. This concept forms the basis for this article, where we share views from a multidisciplinary group of practitioners at the forefront of blockchain conceptualization, development, and deployment.
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