An application of an adapted Harmony Search (HS) algorithm is proposed in this study in order to minimize manual warehouses’ pickers travel distance. Firstly, the distance matrix has been determined through a hybrid algorithm, and then HS is used to compute the pickers' travel distance, developing a MATLAB® simulation model. This model performance is tested on twenty-five scenarios, resulting from variable length of the order pick lists and different manual storage configurations. Thirty picklists are evaluated for each scenario, for a total of 750 simulations. The results provided by the algorithm, compared with those returned by a metaheuristic algorithm and two heuristic routing policies, suggest that HS provides better outputs results than the remaining algorithms. The algorithm is also very efficient from a computational perspective; as order picking is an operational decision, the short computational time allows the pickers route to be defined even in real-time if needed.

在本研究中提出了一种自适应和谐搜索 (HS) 算法的应用，以最大限度地减少手动仓库的拣货员旅行距离。首先通过混合算法确定距离矩阵，然后使用HS计算拣货员的移动距离，开发MATLAB®仿真模型。该模型的性能在 25 个场景中进行了测试，这些场景是由可变长度的订单拣选列表和不同的手动存储配置产生的。为每个场景评估 30 个选项列表，总​​共进行 750 次模拟。该算法提供的结果与元启发式算法和两个启发式路由策略返回的结果相比，表明 HS 提供了比其余算法更好的输出结果。从计算的角度来看，该算法也非常有效；