Cloud and IoT Applications in Material Handling Automation and Intralogistics

Abstract

During the last decade, digitalization has borne tremendous changes on the way we live and do business. Industry 4.0, the new industrial revolution, is merging the physical, digital and virtual worlds through emerging technologies that collide with each other and create a distinctive paradigm shift. Even though the topic of Industry 4.0, has attracted significant attention during the past few years, literature in this subject area is still limited. The main objective of this paper is to study the current state of the art and identify major trends and research shortcomings. To that end, the authors conducted a methodological literature review based primarily on the SCOPUS bibliographic database. The review returned 49 relative papers dealing with the paper’s subject area. Through a thorough study of the selected papers, four dominant literature categories were recognized and discussed in detail. According to the literature reviewed, it is evident that massive changes are underway for warehouses and intralogistics facilities. Still, despite the intense discussion and appeal of the subject, one of the most important challenges in the scientific area under study, as the literature highlights, is the absence of a matching, to its significance, number of real-life applications. To that end, this paper provides a detailed description of a Cloud-based IoT application drawn from a Distribution Center (DC) that supplies retail home furnishing and sporting goods products to stores in Greece and the Balkan region, with the objective to showcase the feasibility of such an investment, highlight its potential and provide motivation to practitioners to evaluate and proceed in similar technological investments.

Exploring the Potentials of Automation in Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Paving the Way for Autonomous Supply Chains

“…Therefore, these physical assets have to be integrated with the digital world, which often leads to problems. Through a literature review, the authors of this article [14] highlighted the main fields of research but concluded that there is a lack of real-world automation applications documented in the literature; to account for that, the authors developed and explained a cloud-based IoT application that could be integrated into a real-life distribution center by using autonomous material handling technologies such as automated guided vehicles, conveyors, shuttles, and others. The case study was situated in a distribution center for home furniture and sporting goods, and they outlined, in an impressive way, how beneficial the integration of the cloud-based IoT solution with material handling automation solutions could be.…”

Design and Implementation of Universal Cyber-Physical Model for Testing Logistic Control Algorithms of Production Line’s Digital Twin by Using Color Sensor

“…The idea of an intelligent factory can be defined in terms of Industry 4.0 concepts by applying the above areas. Theoretically, it is based on nine technological pillars: the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) in the form of CPS, big data and analytics, product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, digital manufacturing, cloud computing, augmented reality, autonomous or collaborative robots, additive manufacturing and cybersecurity [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ].…”

Intelligent Vehicle Scheduling and Routing for a Chain of Retail Stores: A Case Study of Dhaka, Bangladesh

“…Nowadays, Industry 4.0 is transforming the physical, digital, and virtual systems through numerous connections with different entities [1]. Supply chain (SC) digitalization emanates from the communication and coordination [2] in a real-time situation to increase organizational competencies [3] by embracing digital tools [4].…”