Vegetables’ Order Picking Optimization Under B2C Marketing Mode

Since 2010, vegetables online direct-sales mode appears in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities one after another, which opens a new chapter of the vegetables’ B2C e-commerce mode in China. It brings great convenience to young office staffs who is too busy to buy fresh food in supermarkets. However, "One-day Delivery" and "Half-day Delivery", the strong timeliness of distribution brings a great challenge to vegetables’ processing operations. On one hand, the vegetables are perishable. They can’t be stored too much so that they should be fresh-cut. On the other hand, vegetables distribution center is the main node of the whole logistics operation and the current operation process lacks scientificity and standardization. It can’t meet the urgency of the delivery.Within all the operations in the distribution center, the most core link is the order picking operation, because its labor and picking cost occupies the main part of all the work in the warehouse. Order picking in the B2C marketing mode urgently needs high accuracy and high efficiency to meet the subsequent loading operation. The current order picking mode is extensive manual mill picking which efficiency is low, error rate is high and the vegetables rotting degree is high. It is unable to meet the picking demand of B2C direct-sales mode. This paper will investigate on order picking model and picking sequence optimization under the vegetables B2C marketing mode.In order to solve this problem, this paper’s main research work is as follows:(1) Based on the analysis of current order picking under the B2C marketing mode in the distribution center, in order to meet the goal of picking, packaging and delivery on time, introducing the JIT operation idea, this paper proposes the order picking operation mode based on the electronic Kanban, and the work flow and picking strategy is analyzed;(2) Considering the picking line as a machine, according to the principle of machine scheduling and JIT idea, to meet the loading time window and loading chain precedence, this paper establishes the picking sequence optimization model, and analyzes the complexity of the model. It is concluded that it is NP-hard problem;(3) In order to solve the model effectively, based on the combination of qualitative quantitative, we design a hybrid genetic algorithm based on priority rules, and define the steps of the hybrid genetic algorithm;(4) To verify the validity of the improved hybrid genetic algorithm, putting the Beijing Haoyu Company as an instance, this paper conducts different sizes numerical experiments and sensitivity analysis comparing with the conventional genetic algorithm.This paper is the exploration of order picking pattern and sequence optimization in the vegetables distribution center under direct B2C mode. It is useful to the enterprises to normalize their own picking process, meeting the just-in-time picking and improving the picking efficiency; vegetables order picking optimization research is to provide the decision plan for enterprise’s picking. It also enriches the related machine scheduling principle and has the very high practical significance and theoretical significance.