The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Operational decision · 2002–2004
Ankor cut order-picking routes 31% by matching storage to retrieval
Ankor combined storage-assignment and routing policies, shortening warehouse picking routes 31% and cutting order pickers over 25%.
Ankor
The solution
Ankor, a Dutch wholesaler of tools and garden equipment, faced a growing order-picking burden in its warehouse; requirements such as retrieving heavy products first made routing especially complex.
Researchers adapted existing storage-assignment and routing methods into a combined policy that chooses where products live and the sequence pickers travel, explicitly handling Ankor's heavy-first constraints.
Average route length in order picking fell 31%. Ankor implemented the new storage and routing strategy and cut its order-picking workforce by more than 25%.
Why it worked
- Heavy-first constraints made ad-hoc routing expensive, so the model handled them explicitly.
- Storage assignment and routing were co-optimized rather than tuned separately.
- Shortened routes translated directly into fewer required pickers.
- The study also surfaced further picking improvements Ankor adopted.
What can be applied
Warehouse efficiency is a joint storage-and-routing decision: optimizing where items go and the sequence they are retrieved in, together, beats improving either in isolation.
Aftermath
Ankor adopted the new storage and routing strategy plus further picking improvements from the study, and the case was published in Interfaces (2004).
Sources
- Improving Order-Picking Response Time at Ankor's Warehouse
- Improving Order-Picking Response Time at Ankor's Warehouse
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