Fatigue and recovery: research opportunities in order picking systems

摘要

In an order picking system the aim is to obtain an increase of the overall performance not only to reduce costs but also to guarantee the fulfilment of the customer's needs. In most cases, this activity is carried on by operators for the flexibility this can assure. To improve the performance of this kind of system it could be useful to consider more carefully human factor. One aspect of this topic is the accumulation of fatigue which can cause bad physical conditions on the long-term period and have impacts on the efficiency. Focalizing on the existing literature, the objective of this paper is to define how to study fatigue and recovery time in order picking systems. The main focus is the understanding of which instrument can be used for this kind of analysis and what are the steps to be taken for the improvement of picking efficiency through the analysis of fatigue accumulation of the operators.