Leveraging Industry 4.0 Technologies for Warehouse Management and Operation

Generally, most logistics operations are either manual or semi-automatic. In both the cases, workers are moving around and searching material inside warehouse with inventory list manually and loading/unloading into various transported units (for example: conveyors, cranes, trailers, wagons, coil cars, etc.). In smart warehouse management, “System is controlling all logistics activities, generated the orders and received automatically using system, after which the system confirms material availability in warehouse. The work orders are then sent to transporter units that pickup and laydown material in auto mode into yards or other transporter unit and deliver them next process.” In state-of-the-art warehouses, specialized technology allows a flawless material movement, with minimal errors. Smart operators can plan their resources better and optimize processes. They can also minimize risks and keep tight control of costs. Such full insight into the variables and an ability to manage them optimally are the essence of this smart warehouse management system. This paper introduces new technologies for warehouse management system and physical implementation to optimize overall process of logistics and supply chain. Paper presents general novel approach of yard operation using clouds based autonomous operation and describes the newly emerged technologies like advance positioning system, cloud computing, augmented reality, etc. The main contribution of this paper is the presentation of an efficient and in the real world used smart WMS concept and digitalization of smart logistics process of manufacturing industry. The Industry 4.0 technology deployment for logistics operation boosts efficiency for overall supply chain and helps monitor the progress in real-time for decision-making.