Optimization Strategies for In-Store Order Picking in Omnichannel Retailing

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing consumer behavior and accelerating the interest for online grocery purchases. Hence, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are developing omnichannel solutions enabling online purchases in parallel to normal activities. Buy-Online-Pick-up-in-Store concepts are flourishing in this context, and they are the topic of this work. In this paper we propose a novel application of the sequential ordering problem to model products picking throughout the store shelves. The result is an optimized picking sequence that however takes also into account the characteristics of the goods (fragility, weight, etc.). The aim is to preserve goods integrity while allowing the pickers to optimize their route through the shop. The approach is exemplified on historical online orders of a real German shop.