Design of human-robot collaborative hybrid order picking

Simulation-based Design of Human-robot Collaborative Order Picking

Lerher, Grosse, Marolt, Bencak, Zhang & Hercog (2024)

In this chapter, we investigate the design of human-robot collaborative order picking systems and use simulation to evaluate the impact of the system design on order picking performance. We compare assisted and hybrid order picking systems that have become widely used in practice based on their initial system design parameters, throughput rates and costs. The simulation results show that there are several possible solutions for the number of robots and storage zones to achieve a required throughput. However, we still need to consider the minimum costs per order to find the preferred solution for the assisted order picking system. The results further show that hybrid order picking can balance the flexibility of both manual and robotic systems, which can reduce human workload. This contributes to a more human-centric warehouse management. The results of this chapter provide valuable managerial perspectives for the implementation of assisted and hybrid order picking systems and highlight the importance of humanrobot collaboration to maximize warehouse performance and account for human workload.