Design and application of Internet of things-based warehouse management system for smart logistics

Abstract

Warehouse operations need to change due to the increasing complexity and variety of customer orders. The demand for real-time data and contextual information is requried because of the highly customised orders, which tend to be of small batch size but with high variety. Since the orders frequently change according to customer requirements, the synchronisation of purchase orders to support production to ensure on-time order fulfilment is of high importance. However, the inefficient and inaccurate order picking process has adverse effects on the order fulfilment. The objective of this paper is to propose an Internet of things (IoT)-based warehouse management system with an advanced data analytical approach using computational intelligence techniques to enable smart logistics for Industry 4.0. Based on the data collected from a case company, the proposed IoT-based WMS shows that the warehouse productivity, picking accuracy and efficiency can be improved and it is robust to order variability.