• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.129-140
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• 2009

This paper introduces the planar storage location assignment problem (PSLAP) that no research has attempted to mathematically solve. The PSLAP can be defined as the assignment of the inbound and outbound objects to the storage yard with aim of minimizing the number of obstructive object moves. The storage yard allows only planar moves of objects. The PSLAP usually occurs in the assembly block stockyard operations at a shipyard. This paper formulates the PSLAP using a mathematical programming model, but which belongs to the NP-hard problems category. Thus this paper utilizes an efficient genetic algorithm (GA) to solve the PSLAP for real-sized instances. The performance of the proposed mathematical programming model and developed GA is verified by a number of numerical experiments.

• IE interfaces
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.116-125
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• 2009

We revisit the assembly block storage location assignment problem (ABSLAP) at a shipyard, in order to compensate for the deficiency in performance verification of the heuristic ABSLAP algorithm developed by the previous study. In this paper, we formulate a mathematical programming model of the ABSLAP, refine elaborately the heuristic ABSLAP algorithm, and show the performance of the developed mathematical programming model and the revised heuristic ABSLAP algorithm. In addition, we explain simulation experiments conducted using the revised heuristic ABSLAP algorithm to investigate the influences of block stockyard layouts and production schedule instability on the block stockyard operations.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.19-29
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• 1993

The problem of clustering stock-keeping-units to assign storage locations is treated. Firstly, a construction heuristic algorithm is developed to cluster items considering demand dependencies(correlated assignment) for the case that the maximum number or the maximum volume(weight) of items per tray is constrained by the capacity of tray. Secondly, inventory-related cost as well as material handling cost is considered to determine the space requirement and the storage location of each item simultaneously.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.753-770
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• 1996

In order to reduce the number of rehandles during the loading operation of export containers in port container terminals, the storage location of each arriving container should be determined considering of its weight. We formulate the problem by a dynamic programming model to get the optimal storage location. And a heuristic rule is suggested in order to overcome computational difficulties of the optimization model. The performance of the rule is evaluated by comparing it with the result of DP model.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.129-141
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• 2010

An Internet shopping mall for clothing operates a warehouse for packing and shipping products to fulfill its orders. All the products in the warehouse are put into the boxes of same brands and the boxes are stored in a row on shelves equiped in the warehouse. To make picking and managing easy, boxes of the same brands are located side by side on the shelves. When new products arrive to the warehouse for storage, the products of a brand are put into boxes and those boxes are located adjacent to the boxes of the same brand. If there is not enough space for the new coming boxes, however, some boxes of other brands should be moved away and then the new coming boxes are located adjacent in the resultant vacant spaces. We want to minimize the movement of the existing boxes of other brands to another places on the shelves during the warehousing of new coming boxes, while all the boxes of the same brand are kept side by side on the shelves. Firstly, we define the adjacency of boxes by looking the shelves as an one dimensional series of spaces to store boxes, i.e. cells, tagging the series of cells by a series of numbers starting from one, and considering any two boxes stored in the cells to be adjacent to each other if their cell numbers are continuous from one number to the other number. After that, we tried to formulate the problem into an integer programming model to obtain an optimal solution. An integer programming formulation and Branch-and-Bound technique for this problem may not be tractable because it would take too long time to solve the problem considering the number of the cells or boxes in the warehouse and the computing power of the Internet shopping mall. As an alternative approach, we designed a fast heuristic method for this reallocation problem by focusing on just the unused spaces-empty cells-on the shelves, which results in an assignment problem model. In this approach, the new coming boxes are assigned to each empty cells and then those boxes are reorganized so that the boxes of a brand are adjacent to each other. The objective of this new approach is to minimize the movement of the boxes during the reorganization process while keeping the boxes of a brand adjacent to each other. The approach, however, does not ensure the optimality of the solution in terms of the original problem, that is, the problem to minimize the movement of existing boxes while keeping boxes of the same brands adjacent to each other. Even though this heuristic method may produce a suboptimal solution, we could obtain a satisfactory solution within a satisfactory time, which are acceptable by real world experts. In order to justify the quality of the solution by the heuristic approach, we generate 100 problems randomly, in which the number of cells spans from 2,000 to 4,000, solve the problems by both of our heuristic approach and the original integer programming approach using a commercial optimization software package, and then compare the heuristic solutions with their corresponding optimal solutions in terms of solution time and the number of movement of boxes. We also implement our heuristic approach into a storage location assignment system for the Internet shopping mall.

• Journal of Information Technology Applications and Management
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.125-141
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• 2011

As the sales volume of online shops increases, the job burden in the back-offices of the online shops also increases. Order picking is the most labor-intensive operation among the jobs in a back-office and mid-size pure click online shops are experiencing the time delay and complexity in order picking nowadays while fulfilling their customers' orders. Those warehouses of the mid-size shops are based on manual systems, and as order pickings are repeated, the warehouses get a mess and lots of products in those warehouses are getting missing, which results in severe delay in order picking. To overcome this kind of problem in online clothing shops, we research a methodology to locate warehousing products. When products arrive at a warehouse, they are packed into a box and located on a rack in the warehouse. At this point, the operator should determine the box to be put in and the location on the rack for the box to be put on. This problem could be formulated as an Integer Programming model, but the branch-and bound algorithm to solve the IP model requires enormous computation, and sometimes it is even impossible to get a solution in a proper time. So, we relaxed the problem, developed a set of heuristics as a methodology to get a semi-optimum in an acceptable time, and proved by an experiment that the solutions by our methodology are satisfactory and acceptable by field managers.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 1989

This paper deals with the problem of space allocation of items within a warehouse. Recognizing the importance of weights associated with material handling, mathematical models are developed for two cases, out-and-back selection and storage retrieval interleaving. It is proved that the density order index rule we proposed generates an optimal solution for the first model. An example problem solved with the pairwise interchange method indicates that the rule is also fairly efficient for the second model. The proposed rule is compared with other assignment rules of warehouse space such as COI rule, space and popularity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.281-286
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• 2004

It's important to operate the yard for improving to the productivity in container terminal effectively. Because the automated container terminal(ACT) has storage yard of automation and horizon, it's character is different from conventional terminal. As the automation yard in ACT is operated by the automated equipments, it needs to an efficient storage plan which is connected the automated equipment, the external truck, the shipment etc.. Hut the traditional method of storage plan is the space assignment problem. The efficiency of yard decreases and it is brought about increase of shipment time, because real-time automated equipments and present yard status is not reflected in. In order to solve this problems, we propose the algorithm for real-time storage location of container considering shipment plan, yard status and the state of ATC.