The Impact of Writing Direction on Order-Picking Performance: Evidence on Diversity and Efficiency in Operations Management

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Loske, Dominic; Klumpp, Matthias; De Vries, Jelle; Buehrmann, Andrea D.; Giese, Julia; Luebke, Joachim
• 署名单位: Technical University of Darmstadt; Polytechnic University of Milan; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; Erasmus University Rotterdam; University of Gottingen; University of Gottingen; RWTH Aachen University; Technical University of Darmstadt
• 刊物名称: PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1059-1478
• DOI: 10.1177/10591478241248750
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 343-355
• 关键词: Language diversity; order-picking; writing direction; diversity in operations management

摘要

Language system diversity is a source of individual differences. Research on human cognition has established that writing direction influences non-linguistic mental schemata such as spatial orientation. However, there is little empirical evidence of its impact on task performance. We examine whether task performance in manual order-picking is higher when the in-aisle travel direction follows the writing direction of order pickers. We conducted this study in cooperation with a German brick-and-mortar grocery retailer, allowing us to employ a unique real-world data set comprising 3,200,534 storage-location visits by 113 order pickers, 61 of whom had a left-to-right and 52 a right-to-left writing direction. Our statistical analyses suggest that order-picking task performance improves when the in-aisle travel direction follows individual writing direction. This creates a path to diversity-inspired operations management that treats efficiency and the diversity and inclusion of human workers as equally important for optimization.