The Stitch-by-Stitch Strategy for Minimizing Unnecessary Movements: How It Works and Variations
The back-and-forth aisle strategy (also known as the return strategy) describes a route in which the picker enters an aisle only as far as the last pick location requires and then returns along the same path—it is therefore a strategy that involves repeating aisles, since each aisle visited is traversed twice. Here, too, there are two variants: In the non-skipping variant, every aisle is entered—even if it contains only a single pick position. In the skipping variant, aisles without pick positions are skipped entirely, which is the most commonly used form in practice and achieves the greatest route savings.