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A class-based storage warehouse design using a

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Article in International Journal of Operational Research · January 2012

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2012.045188

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Int. J. Operational Research, Vol. 13, No. 2, 2012 219

A class-based storage warehouse design using

a particle swarm optimisation algorithm

Natanaree Sooksaksun* and

Voratas Kachitvichyanukul
Asian Institute of Technology,
P.O. Box 4,
Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand
Fax: +66 2524 5697
E-mail: natanaree_k@hotmail.com
E-mail: st105997@ait.ac.th
*Corresponding author

Dah-Chuan Gong
Chung Yuan Christian University,
200, Chung Pei Road,
Chung Li 32023, Taiwan
Email: gongdc@cycu.edu.tw

Abstract: Classical warehouse design is commonly done in two steps by first

determining the aisle layout and dimension followed by the assignment of
items to storage. The design process is performed iteratively until a design with
appropriate performance criterion is found. This paper proposes an approach
for warehouse design in one step by determining the aisle layout and dimension
while simultaneously assigning shelf spaces for storing the items based on item
classes. A mathematical model is formulated to determine the number of aisles,
the length of aisle and the length of each pick aisle to allocate to each product
class that will minimise the average travel distance for a warehouse that
operates under a class-based storage policy. A particle swarm optimisation
algorithm was developed to determine the optimal warehouse design. The
proposed method not only accomplishes the task in one step but also can
identify multiple alternative designs. A case study is used to illustrate the
proposed algorithm.

Keywords: travel distance; class-based storage; warehouse design; PSO;

particle swarm optimisation.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Sooksaksun, N.,

Kachitvichyanukul, V. and Gong, D-C. (2012) ‘A class-based storage
warehouse design using a particle swarm optimisation algorithm’,
Int. J. Operational Research, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp.219–237.

Biographical notes: Natanaree Sooksaksun is a Doctoral Candidate in

Industrial Engineering and Management, School of Engineering and
Technology, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. She is on study leave
from King Mongkut’s University of Technology, North Bangkok, Thailand.
She received a Master of Engineering degree from King Mongkut’s University
of Technology, Thonburi, Thailand. Her research interests include warehouse
design and operation.

Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

220 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

Voratas Kachitvichyanukul is a Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing

Engineering, School of Engineering and Technology, Asian Institute of
Technology, Thailand. He has extensive experiences in modelling and
simulation of manufacturing systems. His teaching and research interests
include evolutionary algorithms for combinatorial optimisation, simulation,
planning and scheduling, high-performance computing and applied operations
research with special emphasis on industrial systems.

Dah-Chuan Gong is a Professor at the Chung Yuan Christian University,

Taiwan. He holds a PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the
Georgia Institute of Technology. His teaching and research interests include
global logistics management, green supply chain and applied operations
research.

1 Introduction

The successes or failures of modern businesses are often decided by the effectiveness of
the whole supply chain network. Warehouses are an essential part of modern supply
chains that provide important connections among suppliers, manufacturers, distributors
and customers in the supply network (Önüt et al., 2007). Warehousing involves all
movement of goods within warehouse consisting of several processes, i.e. receiving
process, storage process, order picking and shipping process (Rouwenhorst et al., 2000).
The receiving process handles goods that arrive by truck or internal transport during
which the goods may be checked or transformed. The storage process places the goods in
appropriate storage locations. The order picking process retrieves goods from the storage
locations according to sales or customer orders and sent to the shipping area. Finally, the
orders are checked, packed and loaded in carrier for shipping.
One of many factors that influence the effectiveness of warehouse operations is the
layout of warehouse. Hassan (2002) presented that the warehouse design is a highly
complex task. There are several reasons. Firstly, the number of design decisions is large,
and many of them are combinatorial problems that are difficult to solve optimally.
Secondly, many design decisions may affect operations. Finally, the aforementioned
operations and factors interact and such interaction should be accounted for in the design.
Baker and Canessa (2009) proposed that it may not be possible to identify what is the
optimum solution in warehouse design. In warehouse design, it is very important to
maintain a high percentage of usable storage space for storing the products. However,
warehouses must have aisles for operators to travel to pick or place the products.
Warehouses with more aisles will have less usable storage space. Therefore, a balance
between the number of aisles and the usable storage spaces is a major consideration for
warehouse designers. Moreover, a good warehouse layout with proper space allocation
for product classes may significantly reduce the travel distance for order picking.
This paper proposes a mathematical model for one-block warehouse design that
simultaneously determines the aisle layout and storage location assignment based on item
classes. In addition, a particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is proposed to solve the
mathematical model that can handle a larger problem size of warehouse and several
product classes.
 A class-based storage warehouse design 221

The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, the literatures on

warehouse design and PSO algorithm are reviewed. In Section 3, the model of average
travel distance for order picking is developed along with the constraints. In Section 4,
PSO framework for warehouse design is proposed. The solution representation and
decoding method are described in Section 5. A case study is discussed in Section 6 to
illustrate the proposed algorithm. Conclusions and some potential directions for future
research are presented in Section 7.

2 Literature review

The literature reviews are focused on two parts. The first part is warehouse design and
storage location assignment. The second part is PSO algorithm that can be used to solve
complex, difficult optimisation problems.

2.1 Warehouse design and storage location assignment

Generally, a common warehouse layout has a rectangular shape. Caron et al. (2000a)
presented three rectangular layouts that are commonly used in the warehouse design.
The first layout is divided into two blocks with stocking aisle running parallel to the
warehouse front end where the I/O point is located. The second layout contains one block
with stocking aisles running perpendicular to the warehouse front end and the I/O point
located in the middle of the front end. The third layout is the same as the second layout,
but the I/O point is located in the corner of the front end. There are many researchers
working in the field of warehouse design that considers various storage policies. A
random storage policy is the most common assumption that is often used during the
design of warehouse layout (Gu et al., 2010). Rosenblatt and Roll (1984) presented
the model to minimise the total cost with three cost components: costs associated with the
initial investment (construction and handling facilities) that are assumed to be
proportional to the size of warehouse, a shortage cost and costs associated with the
storage policy. Roodbergen and Vis (2006) and Roodbergen et al. (2008) presented
the design of layout structure of manual order picking areas in warehouse with random
storage policy and S-shape routing. They proposed a model that minimises travel
distances in the picking area by identifying an appropriate layout structure consisting of
one or more blocks of parallel aisles.
The random storage policy is widely used in many warehouses because it is easy to
use. Moreover, this policy requires less space than other storage policies which results in
higher space utilisation. However, the travel times of random storage policy are generally
higher than those of other storage policies. The class-based storage policy is another
storage policy with good potential. It combines the benefits of both the dedicated storage
policy and random storage policy (Gu et al., 2007) by dividing goods into classes based
on some criteria. The detailed class-based storage policy that distributes the products,
based on their demand rates, is given by van den Berg (1999). Each class is assigned to a
dedicated area in the warehouse. Storage within an area is random. Usually, the number
of item classes is restricted to three and item classes are usually named A, B and C; that
is why sometimes this method is called the ABC-storage. In literatures, there is no firm
strategy on how to define a class partition. Factors commonly considered include the
number of item classes, percentage of items per class and percentage of the total pick
222 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

volume per class. Petersen et al. (2004) compared the performance implications of class-
based storage to both random- and volume-based storage for a manual order picking
warehouse. The use of class-based storage provides saving of 12% to 26% from a
warehouse using random storage. The level of savings depends on the number of stock-
keeping units on the pick list where larger pick lists tend to yield lower percentage
savings than small pick lists. Moreover, the results show that the performance gap
between class- and volume-based storage decreases as the number of storage classes
increases. For a manual order picking system, Peterson et al. (2004) recommended that
the number of classes should be between two and four. Petersen and Aase (2004)
examined the effect of three process decisions: picking, storage and routing on order
picker travel time by a simulation model. The results show that batching of orders yield
the greatest savings, particularly when smaller order sizes are common. Results also show
that the use of either a class- or volume-based storage policy provides nearly the same
level of savings as batching.
There are a few researchers that work with class-based storage policy when they
design warehouse layout. Park and Webster (1989a) developed an optimisation procedure
to aid a warehouse planner in the design of selected three-dimensional palletised storage
systems. Moreover, Park and Webster (1989b) proposed a new storage structure layout
method called ‘cubic in time’ for minimising the travel time of selected handling
equipment in a three-dimensional palletised storage system. Larson et al. (1997)
presented a class-based storage procedure for warehouse layout. The method is targeted
at practitioners of single-command lift truck pallet storage and retrieval. Three phases
of the procedure were outlined: phase 1, determination of aisle layout and dimensions of
storage zone; phase 2, assignment of material to a storage medium and phase 3, allocation
of floor space. Caron et al. (2000a,b) presented an analytical approach to layout design of
the picking area in low level, picker-to-part systems using random storage policies and
cube per order index (COI) which is defined as the ratio of the item’s storage-space
requirement (cube) to its number of storage/retrieval requests for the items. The main
parameters that affect the layout design are the total length of the picking aisles, the
number of pick stops per tour and the shape of the COI-based ABC curve. Lai et al.
(2002) considered a paper reel layout problem where different classes of paper reels need
to be placed in the cells of a warehouse. The problem is how to layout the paper reel
types into the cell space so the total transportation cost is minimised. They model the
problem and point out that it is non-deterministic polynomial-time hard (NP-hard)
problem. They solved the problem by using a simple optimal solution method and a
simulated annealing method. Le-Duc and De Koster (2005) proposed a probabilistic
model to estimate the average travel distance of a picking tour for class-based storage
policy. Using the average travel distance as the objective function, they present a
mathematical formulation for the storage zone optimisation problem. However, the exact
approach can handle only small size warehouse instances. To circumvent this obstacle,
they propose a heuristic for finding solution to the problem.
Gue and Meller (2009) presented that determining the aisle layout and dimension is
the first step in warehouse design. The second step is to determine storage location
assignment. The determination of the aisle layout and dimension is important because of
its impact on space needs, operations, material handling and storage assignment (Hassan,
2002). While, the storage location assignment concerns the distribution of incoming
products to locations within the storage zones in order to reduce material handling cost
and improve space utilisation (De Koster et al., 2007). Petersen and Aase (2004)
 A class-based storage warehouse design 223

demonstrated that the choice of how storage classes are assigned to storage locations has
a major impact on the successful implementation of class-based storage policy. Zhang
and Lai (2006) presented an integer programming formulation of a multiple level
warehouse layout problem. The problem is NP-hard, and a class of new hybrid heuristics
was proposed by combining a genetic algorithm and path relinking to solve the problem.
Muppani and Adil (2008a) proposed a non-linear integer programming model for class
formation and allocation model. A branch and bound algorithm is developed to solve the
model. The results show that branch and bound algorithm is computationally more
efficient than a baseline dynamic programming algorithm. Moreover, the class-based
policy results in lower total cost of order picking and storage space than the dedicated
and random policies. Muppani and Adil (2008b) formulated an integer programming
model for class formation and storage assignment based on COI. They developed a
simulated annealing algorithm to solve an integer programming model. The results show
that the algorithm gives superior results than the benchmark dynamic programming
algorithm for class formation with COI ordering restriction. Pan and Wu (2009) proposed
three algorithms that optimally allocate items to storages for the cases of a single picking
zone, a picking line with unequal-sized zones and a picking line with equal-sized zones in
a pick-and-pass system. Xiao and Zheng (2010) studied how to determine the storage
locations in a production warehouse that is limited with deterministic product bill of
materials. Dedicated storage strategy is considered in this paper. A mathematical model is
formulated and a multi-stage heuristic is proposed.
There are a few research works that determine the aisle layout and dimension while
simultaneously assign shelf spaces for storing the items based on item classes. Le-Duc
and De Koster (2005) obtained a formula for estimating the average travel distance of a
picking tour for a warehouse that has two blocks. A mathematical formulation for the
storage zone optimisation problem was given with the objective to minimise the average
travel distance. The exact approach can handle only small size of warehouse instances so
a heuristic was proposed.

2.2 PSO algorithm

PSO is one of the more recent evolutionary algorithms (Eberhart and Kennedy, 1995;
Kennedy and Eberhart, 1995). PSO is a meta-heuristic approach that can be used to solve
complex, difficult optimisation problems. Pongchairerks and Kachitvichyanukul (2009a)
provide a review on the wide use of PSO as a powerful optimisation technique for
engineering applications. A variant of PSO with multiple social learning terms for better
convergence is also proposed in Pongchairerks and Kachitvichyanukul (2009b).
In a PSO system, a swarm of particles is randomly initialised. Each particle represents
a potential solution within the multi-dimensional search space. Each particle has a
position vector ( xi ). and a velocity vector (vi ). During iteration, the velocity of each
particle is adjusted based on three components. First is the current velocity of the particle
which represents the inertia term or momentum of the particle. Second is the position
corresponds to the best solution achieved so far by the particle, and it is normally referred
as personal best (pBest). The last one is the position corresponds to the best solution
achieved so far by all the particles in the swarm, i.e. the global best (gBest). The
exchange experience is used to find good search directions for the particles to move
towards an optimal or a near optimal solution. In each cycle during iteration, the velocity
224 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

of each particle is updated by using Equation (1), and the particle is moved to a new
position by Equation (2).

vik 1    
wvik  ªc p u R1 u pBest  xik º  ª cg u R2 u gBest  xik º
¬ ¼ ¬ ¼
(1)

xik 1 xik  vik 1 (2)

where vik is the particle velocity on kth iteration, xik is the current particle position, R1
and R2 are random numbers between zero and one, (c p ) and (cg ) represent ‘trust’
parameters, indicating how much confidence the current particle has in itself ( c p or
cognitive parameter) and how much confidence it has in the swarm ( cg or social
parameter), and w is the inertia constant that is one of the control parameters to control
the influence of the previous velocity. According to Equation (1), the first term represents
influence of the current velocity. The second term represents influence of its previous
best experience. The final term represents influence of the social learning which
incorporates the global best experience. Ai and Kachitvichyanukul (2009) presented that
PSO has been recently applied to many operations research problems, such as flow shop
scheduling, job shop scheduling, home care worker scheduling, multi-mode resource-
constrained project scheduling and vehicle routing. However, there are few research
works that apply PSO to solve warehouse design problem. Önüt et al. (2007) presented a
mathematical model for the design of a multiple level warehouse shelf configuration
which minimises the annual carrying costs. They presented the mathematical model that
is NP-hard and a heuristic was developed via the PSO algorithm for determining the
optimal layout. However, the constraints are not complex and the problem size is quite
small so branch and bound algorithm could be used. Chen and He (2008) discuss the
location assignment strategies of an automatic warehouse. The mathematical model of
the location assignment optimisation was built. Improved PSO based on Pareto optimal
solution is proposed to deal with this problem. The results from simulation experiment
were given and analysed to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm could effectively
solve the problem of location assignment optimisation.

3 Mathematical model

In this research, the targeted warehouse configuration is shown in Figure 1. The

mathematical model is formulated under the following assumptions:
x The total floor space of the warehouse is known.
x The warehouse consists of multiple identical rectangular racks. Each rack can be
used to store more than one product class.
x The warehouse has one dock which is located in the middle.
x The class-based storage strategy and return routing policy are used in this warehouse.
x Low-level system, items are stored in shelves less than 2 m high (Caron et al.,
2000b).
 A class-based storage warehouse design 225

x Narrow aisle, i.e. the order pickers can pick items from both sides of the aisle in one
pass; no additional time is needed for switching to pick from one side to the other
side of an aisle. Therefore, travel distances are measured along the aisle centre line.
x Items in the same class have the same order frequency. The order frequency of each
item class is defined as the number of times that an item from that class is required in
a planning period; it is known and constant throughout the planning period.
The following notations are used throughout this paper.
Input parameter
I class index, i 1, 2,! , c
J aisle index, j 1, 2,!, a
Q number of picks in a picking tour
C number of classes
wa width of the cross aisle
wb centre-to-centre distance between two consecutive (storage) aisles
wc width of the storage rack
S total floor space
Si percentage of the total storage space used for class i
fi percentage order frequency of product class i
Lmin minimum length of a storage aisle
u0 minimum percentage usable storage space of the warehouse.
Decision variables
a number of storage aisles
L length of a storage aisle
lij partial length of storage aisle j used for storing of product class i.

Figure 1 The warehouse layout configuration

226 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

The travel distance of order pickers is affected by various design factors, e.g. storage
assignment, warehouse shape and warehouse layout (Ho et al., 2008). This paper
considers the warehouse design problem that attempts to minimise the average travel
distance. The average travel distance in the warehouse will consider both cross-aisle
travel distance and the within aisle distance (Caron et al., 2000b; Le-Duc and De Koster,
2005). Le-Duc and De Koster (2005) proposed the formula for estimating the cross-aisle
travel distance for two-block warehouse. The formula is modified for one-block
warehouse as shown below. The layout of the warehouse is separated into two parts; the
right- and the left-hand side of the I/O point. Only the cross-aisle travel distance in
the right-hand side of the I/O point is calculated. After that, the average travel distance is
multiplied by two. To estimate the cross-aisle travel distance, the farthest visited pick
lines are determined. First of all, the probability that j is the farthest pick line is
determined by using j between (a  1) / 2 to a. After that, these terms are multiplied by
the distance from the I/O point. In return routing, the distance is multiplied by two.
Therefore, the cross-aisle travel distance can be estimated as follows:
ª a
­ § wb · ½º
TDCA 2 u «2 ¦ ®(2 j  a  1) u ¨ ¸ u (prob. that j is the farthest pick line)¾ » (3)
«¬ j ( a 1)/2 ¯ © 2 ¹ ¿ »¼

Where the probability that pick line j is the farthest can be determined by the
following steps.
Step 1 Calculate the probability that an item belonging to class i located in aisle j is
ordered
lij
pij fi a
(i 1, 2,! , c, j 1, 2,! , a ) (4)
¦ j 1
lij

where lij t 0 is the length in aisle j used for storing class i and fi t 0 is the order
frequency of class i.
It is assumed that fi and lij are given.

Step 2Calculate the probability that aisle j is visited to pick q items

c
If one item is ordered, then the probability that aisle j is visited is ¦ p .
i 1 ij
Thus if q
items are required, then the probability that the aisle j is visited is
c q
§ ·
mj 1  ¨1 
¨
©
¦
i 1
pij ¸
¸
¹
(5)

Step 3For a specific pick, calculate the probability that the pick is at pick line j
mj § a 1 a 1 a 1 ·
mcj a ¨ j ,  1,  2,! , a ¸ (6)
2 2 2
¦ j
a 1 m j
2
© ¹
 A class-based storage warehouse design 227

Step 4 Calculate the probability that for q picks, the pick will be between pick line
(a+1)/2 to a
For a specific pick, the probability that a pick will be between pick line (a + 1)/2 to a
a
equals ¦ a 1 m cj . Therefore, the probability that for q picks, the pick will be between
j
2
pick line (a  1) / 2 to a is
q
§ ·
¨ a ¸
¨
¨¨ j
¦
a 1
mcj ¸
¸¸
© 2 ¹ (7)
Step 5 Calculate the probability that pick line j is the farthest
q q
§ j · § j 1 · § a 1 a 1 a 1 ·

\ m cj , q  ¨
¨© j ¦ m cj ¸  ¨
¸¹ ¨© j ¦ m cj ¸
¸¹ ¨©  j
2
,
2
 1,
2
 2,! , a¸ (8)
¹
( a 1)/ 2 ( a 1)/ 2

Therefore,

ª a º
TDCA 2u «
«¬ j
¦ ^(2 j  a  1)  w \  mc , q `»»
( a 1)/ 2
b j (9)
¼
To calculate within aisle distance, Le-Duc and De Koster (2005) proposed the formula as
follows:

 ¦i 1c (10)

where
pij
pijc c  j 1, 2,! , a 
¦ i 1
pij

and
qj q
§ i · § i 1 · j
\  pkjc , q j  ¨ ¦pkjc ¸ ¨ ¦ pkjc ¸ , i t 2
¨ ¸ ¨ ¸
©k 1 ¹ ©k 1 ¹
The mathematical formulation is given below:

Objective Minimise TD TD WA  TDCA (11)

s.t.:

ª S º
1d a d « » (12)
«  wa  Lmin ,  wb »
228 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

2 wc a ª S º
«  wa » t uo (13)
S ¬ awb ¼
c
ª S º
¦l
i 1
ij «
¬ awb
 wa » i
¼
1, 2,! , a (14)

a
ª S º
¦l
j 1
ij Si a «
aw
¬ b
 wa » i
¼
1, 2,! , c (15)

§ a 1 ·
lij li , a  j 1  ¨ i 1, 2,! , c, j 1, 2,! , ¸ (16)
© 2 ¹

§ a 1·
lij t 0  ¨ i 1, 2,! , c, j 1, 2,! , ¸ (17)
© 2 ¹

D is integer and odd number (18)

The constraints of the model are given in Equations (12)–(18). Equation (12) satisfies the
range of the number of aisles. Equation (13) ensures that the percentage usable
storage space is more than the minimum percentage usable storage space of the
warehouse. Equation (14) concerns aisle’s length. The total space for each class is
presented in Equation (15). Equation (16) concerns the symmetrical property of the
layout. Equation (17) ensures that the lengths of aisles are non-negative. Finally,
Equation (18) ensures that the number of aisle is integer and odd number.
From the mathematical model, the number of aisles, the length of aisle and the length
of each pick aisle to allocate to each product class can be determined that will minimise
the average travel distance. Unfortunately, this objective function is non-linear and it is
difficult to solve. Therefore, the PSO algorithm is proposed to solve this
mathematical model.

4 PSO framework for warehouse design

The basic PSO framework for warehouse design is shown in Figure 2.

Firstly, the necessary data for warehouse design are input. Secondly, the maximum
number of aisles is calculated from two sources; the minimum length of aisle and the
minimum percentage usable storage space of the warehouse. Finally, the minimum of
the upper bound of the number of aisle is selected. After that, a swarm of particles with

ª§ Max.no. of alsle  1 · º
1  «¨  1¸ u  No.of classes  1 »
¬© 2 ¹ ¼
dimensions is generated with random positions and zero velocity in the first iteration. In
each subsequent iteration, the position of each particle is decoded into the number of aisle
and the length of each pick aisle to allocate to each product class (see details in
Section 5). Next, the travel distance (fitness function) is calculated. The personal best and
global best will be updated prior to the updates of the velocity and position of each
 A class-based storage warehouse design 229

particle by using Equations (1) and (2). If the reinitialisation criterion is met, reinitialise
the particles. This algorithm repeats until a predefined number of iteration is met.

Figure 2 PSO framework for warehouse design

230 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

5 Solution representations and decoding method

The dimension of the particle is

ª§ Max. no. of alsle  1 · º

1  «¨  1¸ u  No. of classes  1 »
¬© 2 ¹ ¼
as discussed earlier. For example, if the maximum number of aisle equals 11 and the
number of product class equals 3, the dimension of particle equals 11. Figure 3(a) shows
the particle that has 11 dimensions. The dimensions of the particle are separated into two
parts to represent the solutions. The first part used only one dimension of the particle to
represent the number of aisle by using Equation (19).
The number of aisle R1 (The maximum no.of aisle  1) (19)

Suppose that a randomly generated particle with 11 dimensions is generated with the
value as shown in Figure 3(b).
The first dimension of the particle is decoded into the number of aisle with the value
equals 0.5, the decoded number of aisle equals 5. Once the number of aisle is known, the
length of aisle can be determined by the formula L ( s / awb )  wa that is modified from
formula (14). The dimensions in the second part of the particle are decoded into the
length of each class in each aisle. It is sufficient to decode only the length of each class in
aisle in the right-hand side of the I/O point because the layout of the warehouse is
symmetrical. Therefore, lij li ,a  j 1. Table 1 shows an example to illustrate the decoding
procedure.

Figure 3 (a) A particle with 11 dimensions and (b) an example of a randomly generated particle

(a)

(b)

Table 1 Illustrative example

Aisle Class A Class B Class C Length of aisle

3 l13 l23 l33 10

4 l14 l24 l34 10

5 l15 l25 l35 10

Storage space 5 10 15
 A class-based storage warehouse design 231

Using the particle in Figure 3(b), the results obtained by decoding the particle are as
follows: l23 0.9 u Min (10  l13,10 ) 5.85, l14 0.1u Min (10, 5  l13 ) 1.15 and
l24 0.4 u Min (10  l14,10  l23 ) 1.66. After that, l33 10  (l13  l23 ) 0.65, l34 10 
(l14  l24 ) 8.19, l15 5  (l13  l14 ) 1.35, l25 10  (l22  l24 ) 2.49 and l35 15 
(l33  l34 ) 6.16 are calculated. In addition, l11, l12,l21, l22,l31 and l32 are calculated by using
Equation (16). This decoding method always coverts particles into feasible solutions and
no effort is wasted. Moreover, this method can handle all sizes of warehouse problem.

6 Computational result

The following examples illustrate how this algorithm can be used in practice. The
warehouse is planned to store multiple product groups. The annual throughput of
the warehouse is classified into four groups, A, B, C and D, based on their turnover
rates. The product classes A, B, C and D are food products, sunlight disk washing
powder, fabric softener and bar/liquid soap and skin and hair care products, respectively.
The ordering probabilities of each class are 0.6, 0.25, 0.10 and 0.05, respectively. The
total storage capacity of the warehouse is divided for each product class. The percentage
of the total storage space used for each class equal 20, 25, 25 and 30, respectively. The
average number of picks per tour is 20.
Additional data are concerned with the dimensions in the storage area. The total floor
space of the warehouse is 32,133.75 m2. The width of the cross aisle is 2 m. The width of
the storage rack is 2.5 m. The minimum length of the storage rack is 10 m. In addition,
the centre-to-centre distance between two pick aisles is 7 m. The minimum usable storage
space is 70%.
The PSO framework for warehouse design is implemented in C# programming
language using the PSO object library from ET-Lib (Nguyen et al., 2010). The PSO
parameters are set as follow. The number of particles is one important parameter of
PSO because it affects the convergence rate of fitness value and computation time.
Moreover, higher number of particles always increases computation time, but might not
improve the fitness value. A graph of the objective function values for various population
sizes vs. number of iterations can be used to select the appropriate number of particles
(see Figure 4). The number of particles is fixed at 400 because increasing the number of
particles to 800 will have improvement of only about 0.224% in terms of solution quality
but more than double the computation time. The stopping criterion is set at 1,000
iterations since there is no improvement after 800 iterations, and the possibility of finding
a better solution is quite low. The inertia weight is linearly decreasing from 5 to 0.9. The
acceleration constants for self-learning and social learning are 0.1 and 1, respectively.
The reinitialisation is done every five cycle of iterations. Ten replications are used in this
experiment.
The results from the PSO framework for warehouse design are shown in Tables 2
and 3. Table 2 shows the average travel distance that is the objective function and the
optimum number of aisle.
From Table 2, the minimum travel distance equals 1,601.4 m and the optimal number
of aisle is 45. Table 3 shows the resulting length of each storage aisle used for storing of
each product class.
232 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

Figure 4 The travel distance among the different number of particles

Table 2 The results from the PSO framework for warehouse design

Replications Minimum travel distance (m) The optimal number of aisle The length of aisle
1 1,606.619 43 104.75
2 1,607.352 43 104.75
3 1,605.021 45 100
4 1,622.063 43 104.75
5 1,608.278 45 100
6 1,608.623 45 100
7 1,607.280 45 100
8 1,601.400 45 100
9 1,602.788 45 100
10 1,616.106 45 100
Average 1,608.553
Minimum 1,601.400
 A class-based storage warehouse design 233

Table 3 The length of each storage aisle used for storing of each product class

Length of each storage aisle

Aisle Product class A Product class B Product class C Product class D Length of aisle
1 0.5 0.6 31.2 67.7 100.0
2 0.2 0.7 39.3 59.8 100.0
3 0.6 6.5 39.5 53.4 100.0
4 0.7 11.7 54.0 33.6 100.0
5 4.3 44.1 24.6 27.0 100.0
6 11.4 29.0 23.3 36.3 100.0
7 15.8 29.6 18.3 36.3 100.0
8 27.1 20.0 27.0 25.9 100.0
9 28.9 15.2 28.9 27.0 100.0
10 41.4 24.3 28.4 5.9 100.0

The PSO framework warehouse is run again by using 1,000 particles and 5,000 iterations.
In other words, the experiment was repeated with 2.5 times more particles and running
five times as long. The best value of the travel distance obtained from this experiment is
1,591.258 m which only represents 0.64% improvement over previous experiment which
is 12.5 times shorter in terms of computational time. This confirms that the use of 400
particles with 1,000 iterations is sufficient to yield good solution. This fact is also
confirmed by the plot of the convergence index as shown in Figure 5. The convergence
index is defined as the best average travel distance at a given iteration divided by the best
solution. In Figure 5, let Y* is the best solution and Y is the average travel distance.
To compare with the classical method for warehouse design, the first step is to
determine the aisle layout and dimension. The maximum number of aisle equals 46 with
the usable storage space exceeds the minimum usable storage space. So there are 23
alternatives to consider number of aisles (see Table 4).
The second step is to select the number of aisles and to assign storage areas to product
classes. For example, if the number of aisle equals 9 is selected, the average travel
distance equals 3,488.73. However, nine is not the optimal number of aisles for this
problem. To find the optimal number of aisles, storage areas must be assigned to product
classes for all cases with different number of aisles in order to calculate the
corresponding travel. Figure 6 shows the average travel distance for each number of
aisles.
With the classical warehouse design method, the number of aisles that is selected may
not be optimal. If the number of aisles is checked to find the optimal number of aisles,
more calculations are required. The proposed approach replaces the trial and error
method in the classical warehouse design with a systematic solution procedure that can
provide several designs with competitive average travel distance.
234 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

Figure 5 Plot of convergence index

Table 4 The number of aisle and the length of each aisle

The number of aisles Length of aisle The number of aisles Length of aisle
1 4,588.43 25 181.62
3 1,528.14 27 168.02
5 916.09 29 156.29
7 653.78 31 146.08
9 508.05 33 137.10
11 415.31 35 129.16
13 351.11 37 122.07
15 304.03 39 115.70
17 268.03 41 109.96
19 239.60 43 104.75
21 216.59 45 100.00
23 197.58
 A class-based storage warehouse design 235

Figure 6 The average travel distance among the different number of aisle

7 Conclusion

In this paper, a mathematical model to determine the aisle layout and storage location
assignment based on item classes in a warehouse is developed. The objective is to
minimise an average travel distance which is a non-linear function that is difficult to find
the optimal solution. The PSO framework for a one-step warehouse design is proposed
along with an illustration of the specific decoding method. Numerical examples are
presented to illustrate the advantages of the approach. The result from this study shows
that the PSO framework for one-step warehouse design can generate many good
alternatives for consideration in the design of a warehouse. In addition, it exposes the
weakness of the classical warehouse design method that may lead to solutions that are far
from optimal. In this research, only one-block warehouse is considered but, in practice,
other layout may be used. Therefore, it is an interesting direction for further research.
Furthermore, PSO framework can be applied for other warehouse problems with different
mathematical models with more complex routing policy.
236 N. Sooksaksun, V. Kachitvichyanukul and D-C. Gong

Acknowledgements

The first author acknowledges the financial support from the Thai National Science and
Technology Development Agency (NSTDA). The ET-Lib was developed with funding
from the Royal Thai Government – AIT Joint Research Funding 2008.

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