Information based approach for sort operation in logistic industry

• Published in: 2017 13th IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE) pp. 1356 - 1361
• Main Authors: Zhou, Chenhao, Stephen, Aloisius, Li, Haobin, Lee, Loo Hay, Chew, Ek Peng
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.08.2017
• Subjects: Aircraft; Companies; Industries; Loading; Logistics; Sorting; Workstations
• ISSN: 2161-8089
• DOI: 10.1109/COASE.2017.8256291

With the explosive increase of e-commerce in Singapore, a world-leading logistic company has to sort thousands of packages to specific vehicles before dawn and then deliver to customers by noon every day, and thus, the operation efficiency becomes the key competitive indicator. As in the era of Industry 4.0, we aim to explore and utilize the data passing through the operations to improve the package sorting operation, which currently is purely based on First-Come-First-Serve strategy. Upon observation of the current operation, there are two major challenges, which are to: (1) reduce the sort operation duration, effectively reducing under-utilization of workstations and personnel, and to (2) minimize the waiting time for route fulfilment in order to reduce congestion at the loading bay. To tackle the problem, this study proposes an information based approach to determine the handle sequence of ULDs based on three metrics: the ULD ready time, the ULD processing time, and the ratio of the packages to routes on standby. The numerical experiment has shown that the proposed approach shaves off 10% of the sort operation duration, which equates to an annual reduction of about 2500 man-hours.