An order fulfillment system controller receives orders for different objects, generates a number of batched tasks that is less than the number of received orders, and determines a set of the orders with a total distance between them that is greater than a total distance between other sets of the orders. The controller allocates a different order from the set of order to a different batched task, and allocates each unallocated order to a selected batched task based on the distance between objects of the unallocated order and objects previously allocated to the selected batched task being less than the distance between objects of the unallocated order and objects previously allocated to other batched tasks. The controller controls different agents according to the allocation of different subsets of orders to different batched tasks.