Order-Picking Efficiency in E-Commerce Warehouses: A Literature Review

With the vigorous development of e-commerce, efficient order picking in e-commerce warehouses has attracted the attention of many scholars. To analyze the issues about order-picking efficiency currently being studied by relevant scholars in e-commerce warehouses, this paper reviews the literature on the application of order-picking strategy and efficiency optimization direction from 2020 to 2022. That mainly falls into two categories of picking systems: “picker-to-parts” and “parts-to-picker”. In the “picker-to-parts” picking system, more attention is paid to the picking strategies of storage assignment and order batching and the integration of multiple picking strategies. In contrast, in the “parts-to-picker” picking system, the main attention is on the man-machine cooperation in the Mobile Robot Fulfillment System (RMFS) and the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS), as well as the coordination of the picking station. Further, this paper proposes future research directions for two categories of picking systems: further studying the order splitting strategy and order delivery issues; considering the dynamic uncertainties; combining the automated picking system with different picking strategies, and so on.