Dynamic scheduling method on warehouse layout in distribution centers
配送中心存储布局的一种动态调度方法

Locating the goods into the warehouse in distribution centers is a NP-Hard problem. In this paper, the warehouse was divided into some unit spaces. Integrating the properties of space and time, a dynamic algorithm for the warehouse scheduling in distribution centers was proposed. Within a period of schedule planning horizon, the whole scheduling problem was divided into three parts. The first part generated the initial set of goods with respect to every time slice by considering spatial constraints, arriving time and departure time of the goods; The second part realized the warehouse layout of the initial set of goods obtained in the first part via GA. Because the global searching property of GA, application of elite strategy and leaving minus strategy have been designed to realize the genetic operations, the preferable layout scheme can be found within a unit space. In the third part, the mutual adjustments were used to overcome the scrap in the unit space because of the small amount of goods. Finally, two simulation examples were performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed optimization approach.