Differential evolution algorithm for storage location assignment problem

Abstract

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015. This study addresses warehouse storage location assignment problems (SLAP) where the traveling distance in an order-picking process is considered with three-axis traveling distance; two-horizontal and one-vertical distance. A mathematical model of the problem is first presented, then LINGO is used to find optimal solutions for a set of generated problems. However, as the problem size increases, computing time increases rapidly, and eventually the solution could not be found when the problem size is very large. Thus, this study presents an application of Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm to solve SLAP. The performance of proposed DE is evaluated on a set of generated problems, and the experimental results shows that the algorithm is able to provide good solutions especially for the large-size problems with relatively shorter computing time.