A communicating object’s approach for smart logistics and safety issues in warehouses

Abstract

A communicating object, or connected object, is a key element of the Internet of Things to shift a perceptible real world into a wide digital virtual world known as the cyber-physical system. Knowing that sustainability, safety, and logistic issues are among the significant goals and challenges of modern industrial enterprises, the communicating object can be a relevant concept to guarantee safety performance in logistics and warehouse management. This article presents the impacts and advantages of the communicating object in smart logistics and the design of a communicating object model inspired from Internet of Things European research projects, which controls and monitors safety risks in a hazardous and chemical industrial context. Generic safety-based scenarios are presented, which rely on a set of negotiated interaction mechanisms for storage and picking. The relevant deployment of intelligence in a warehouse management system leads to propose a new concept called ''IoT-controlled Safe Area.'' Our contribution is to bring informational, communicational, and decisional capabilities close to the warehousing physical world thanks to the communicating object. This enables achieving safety assurance with a decrease in the decision-making delay and an increase in the solving efficiency of local and dynamic disruptions, while avoiding inherent shortcomings of the warehouse management system centralization. For this, an industrial implementation is presented.

Research streams on digital transformation from a holistic business perspective: a systematic literature review and citation network analysis

“…Reaidy et al (2015) and Zhong et al (2017) show that RFID technology is especially useful in warehouses to track resources and to connect objects. Advantages of the aforementioned communication technologies in smart logistics, as in higher safety are shown (Trab et al 2017). Moreover, applications of technologies are demonstrated like the development of an algorithm to optimize truck docking (Miao et al 2014).…”

Intelligent agent based framework to augment warehouse management systems for dynamic demand environments

“…In a warehouse environment there can also be many other unexpected events. The WMS agent in Trab et al (2017) is based on real-time safety compatibility constraints of goods and people in a hazardous goods environment and is focused on minimising risk. Trab et al (2017) describes an "unexpected event" as something that increases risk to "products, humans and the environment" such as "the presence of an empty product owing to a leak, and a human user without safety protection equipment".…”

“…This introduces the concept of non-human agency in the warehouse giving agency to products and shelves and is an important aspect of actor-network theory (Latour, 2005). This "intelligent product" concept has been extended into concepts such as "communicating objects" (Trab et al, 2017) and "smart warehouses" (Ding, 2013).…”

“…Agent communication strategies may be cooperation, competition, coo-petition or comp-eration (Reaidy et al, 2015). Trab et al (2017) use the "communicating object" concept and IoT to deal with the safe handling of hazardous products in a warehouse. All actors in the warehouse are modelled including human operators.…”

Cloud and IoT Applications in Material Handling Automation and Intralogistics

“…Finally, based on [21], the use of CC could provide efficiencies in the whole supply chain through increased visibility and collaboration, and more specifically for warehousing and intralogistics, inventory management and order processing could be greatly aided. According to [22], IoT applications could also assist at increasing safety in warehousing environments. A Communicating Object (CO) is a key element of the IoT to transform a perceptible real world into a digital virtual environment, known as the CPS.…”