Abstract
Production lines form the backbone of a manufacturing plant while the warehouse is the heart that pumps the supplies through logistics veins. However, logistics issues among manufacturing industries are well known for causing downstream production problems. Non-transparent warehouse operation and inevitable human error in logistics activities seriously jeopardise the entire downstream manufacturing processes. Existing warehouse management solutions require many sensors spanning the warehouse for tracking logistics activities which are cost-ineffective and inflexible. One aspect of intelligent WMS that has not been explored is the integration of computer vision modeling with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create a more flexible, transparent, and autonomous warehouse management system (WMS). This study aims to devise a Smart and Flexible WMS (SFlex-WMS) to improve logistics operations in terms of operation costs, process time, and space utilisation. The highlight of the proposed framework is the two major work packages (WP) which focus on flexible, autonomous sensing mechanisms for inventory, logistics tracking, and space mapping, as well as reconstructing the warehouse environment model that reflects all physical changes in the warehouse. SFlex-WMS intends to realize real-time transparent monitoring of warehouse operations. By exploiting the outputs from both WPs, SFlex-WMS is expected to achieve more effective and flexible warehouse operations.
Highlights
The world is embarking on revolutionising the manufacturing industry once more
SFlex-warehouse management system (WMS) seals the gaps between WMS and augmented reality to provide a real-time physical warehouse update by projecting the warehouse environment and setting in a flexible virtual model, thereby effectively eliminate human errors in the updating processes and enable transparent warehouse operations
work packages (WP)-1 architecture consists of four major modules known as expert (Fig. 2): (1) Object Identification Expert, (2) Space Mapping Expert, (3) RFID Tracking Expert and (4) Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Summary
The world is embarking on revolutionising the manufacturing industry once more. Known as Industry 4.0, its ultimate goal is to create smart factories through the use of cyber-physical systems, internet-of-things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) to enable more flexible manufacturing and better adapt to market changes. Nontransparent warehouse operation and inevitable human error in the logistics activities severely jeopardise the entire manufacturing processes downstream. Misplaced items and containers can cause a significant amount of resource wastage in large automobile manufacturing plants (Zhou, Piramuthu, Chu & Chu, 2017). Operational uncertainties from both demand and supply can bring detrimental impact on logistics services that value high efficiency and low cost. SFlex-WMS seals the gaps between WMS and augmented reality to provide a real-time physical warehouse update by projecting the warehouse environment and setting in a flexible virtual model, thereby effectively eliminate human errors in the updating processes and enable transparent warehouse operations. The proposed smart "self-adjusting" warehouse aims to manage more operational randomness that serves as a characteristic to benefit warehouse management in SMEs
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