as wave-releasing and order-to-lane assignment so that the orders can be efficiently sorted in a given wave. There are relatively few research results in this area. Bozer and Sharp (1985) consider a system that processes a relatively small number of large orders.In this case, each sorting lane is typically dedicated to one order. The authors use simulation to analyze the dependence of the system throughput on factors such as the induction capacity, the number of lanes, and the length of lanes. Bozer et al. (1988) consider a similar problem but with a large number of small orders. In this case, each lane is assigned several orders and an order-to-lane assignment policy determines how and when the orders enter the sort-ing lanes