Research on Multi-product Order Splitting and Distribution Route Optimization Of "Multi-warehouse in One Place"

Abstract

In recent years, large online supermarkets have become a new trend in the development of e-commerce. Due to the limited storage capacity of a single warehouse, many large online supermarkets, such as Jingdong and Tmall, often adopt the warehouse layout of "one place and multiple warehouses" to quickly respond to customer needs, and the sorting and distribution tasks of orders are completed by the warehouse. At the same time, due to the change of people's lifestyle, customer demand presents the characteristics of "one order with multiple products" and "one order with multiple quantities", which makes the split fulfillment of orders become a common phenomenon. In this paper, under the condition that the warehouse is not out of stock in the layout of one place and many warehouses, aiming at the split execution problem of multi-category orders, the split order method is based on the combination of "minimum split order rate" and "principle of proximity". An order splitting optimization model considering both category and quantity splitting is established, and a set of initial order batch splitting schemes is formed to achieve the first optimization of multi-category order splitting. Secondly, the PLBH-LNS method is used to generate a better initial distribution scheme considering the customer preset time window limit and vehicle-mounted capacity constraint. Finally, with the goal of minimizing the total order performance cost, the solution idea of two-stage method is used for reference, based on the initial order splitting scheme and distribution scheme, the improved two-stage genetic algorithm is used to generate the optimal order allocation scheme and distribution scheme from the alternative schemes, and the global optimization of the splitting and distribution process is realized. The experimental results show that compared with the order splitting strategy using simple rules in practice, the PLBH-LNS method can reduce the average order splitting cost by 12.48%, which provides a new idea and effective auxiliary decision support for the order splitting problem of large online supermarkets.