Order processing task allocation and scheduling for E-order fulfilment

This paper mainly studies a task allocation and scheduling problem in the multi-thread fulfilment process of electronic order, which seeks to minimise the makespan under thread constraints and order precedence constraints. The problem is formulated as a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model and a novel depth-first heuristic is proposed to solve it. The depth-first heuristic shows high effectiveness and efficiency, compared with the current policy and the genetic algorithm in both small/medium-scale and large-scale cases from the real transaction data. In addition, two extensions on precedence constraint reduction and resource allocation are discussed to further improve and manage the e-order fulfilment process.