近年來由於經濟的全球化、貿易的自由化以及國家經濟架構與社會需求改變等因素的催化，企業的型態也跟著起了重大的變化，以往企業都只專注於自身內部問題的改善，但隨著競爭環境日益激烈，生存條件日益嚴苛，著重企業自身的改善已無法增加生存的優勢，因此企業也開始重視企業與企業之間的供需問題，而此問題演化至今即為今日我們所熟悉的供應鍊管理。供應鍊管理的層面包含極廣，包含產品的定價、銷售策略以及物流的策略模式都是其所探討的範圍，而其中物流的相關議題更是成為全球企業一致關注的焦點，因為物流系統架構的完整性以及整合的效率將會大大影響企業供應鏈的成效表現。 隨著環境的改變，以及消費者需求的多樣化，使得物流中心每天都必須處理許多訂單，而大多數的物流中心仍然以大量的人力進行揀貨作業，由此可知揀貨作業是項重要且繁雜的工作，能否在合理時間內完成揀貨作業、增快貨品流通速度並避免不必要的成本支出，讓商品能快速的運送到顧客手中，將直接影響物流中心的營運成本與顧客滿意度的高低。為了更有效率的處理揀貨作業，如何規劃揀貨作業的程序進行以達到提高效率的目的，對於物流中心的營運績效、經營成本有著顯著的影響。 本研究所探討的問題屬於物流中心內部之揀貨作業研究，針對分區揀貨議題進行探討，藉由提出一個具備途程彈性的揀貨作業系統改善傳統順序式分區揀貨的缺點，並建議搭配RFID系統的使用讓新環境提供揀貨箱的移動上具途程彈性的特點更為突出，並期望針對特定時間內的所有訂單，在不同的情境之下，以各種策略的組合來模擬出各種結果，並藉此判斷在何種情況下，以何種方法來進行揀貨作業可以使其效率最佳化。本研究即以吾人所提出之訂單選取法則以及揀貨箱派送法則，搭配模擬軟體Arena來進行模擬測試，最後使用總揀貨時間以及總系統時間來進行績效的衡量，而模擬的結果也發現，本研究所提出之改善後的分區揀貨環境其表現的確較傳統順序式分區揀貨環境要好，另外本研究也提出在改善後之分區揀貨環境下，能產生較好表現的訂單選取法則及揀貨箱派送法則的搭配組合。This study deals with the order-picking problem in sequential（progressive）zone picking. The picking area of the environment has been divided into different zones. A picking-box often has to visit more than one zone to get all items in an order. This environment has one important restriction – even if the box does not have to pick items in this zone, the box still have to pass it to the next target zone, which means routing is not allowed in this environment. This paper modifies this restriction and build a new zone picking environment that routing is allowed, and we suggest that use the RFID system to enhance its performance. Five order -selection rules-the random , the minimize punishment strategy, the maximum none replication zone strategy, the minimize none replication zone strategy, and the maximum picking items strategy are proposed and studied for the problem. Six zone-visitation sequencing strategies –the random strategy, the maximum idle times of the idle areas strategy, the minimize travel times strategy, the minimize picking time strategy, the minimize working time in the zone on the order strategy and the maximum working time in the zone on the order strategy– are proposed and studied for the problem. Simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed strategies in two performance measures –Total System Time to complete the picking operations (TST), and Total Picking Time of picking boxes (TBT). The simulation results show that the new environment is better than the traditional sequential zone picking environment, and we also show the best combination of order-picking solutions and zone-visitation sequencing strategies that can let the new environment have better performance.
