A Dynamic Programming Heuristic for Optimizing Slot Sizes in a Warehouse

There exist a number of mathematical problems in the literature concerning warehouse storage optimization. However, to the best of our knowledge the problem of finding optimal slot sizes in pallet rack system minimizing the occupied storage space is not studied. More precisely, the problem is to optimally choose k of m pallet racks with pallets in a warehouse, find optimal slot sizes in pallet racks for these pallets, and reassign the pallets to the new slots in order to reduce the occupied space maximally. In this paper we suggest a dynamic programming heuristic which finds optimal slot sizes for the given number k of pallet racks in a warehouse. Our computational experiments are based on real-life data and demonstrate the efficiency of the suggested algorithm.