The role of distributed intelligence in warehouse management systems

Abstract

Third-party-logistics warehouses have been gaining popularity in recent years mainly due to their ability to buffer the material flow along a supply chain and consolidate the products from various suppliers, which has a major impact on supply chain efficiency. The issues and challenges in warehouse management are similar in many ways to those faced in manufacturing control, resilience and adaptability being two such issues. Since distributed intelligence (DI) approaches have been extensively studied to address such issues in manufacturing control, this paper examines the possible adoption of DI approaches in warehouse management systems (WMS). Further, the paper discusses the challenges in warehouse management and compares these challenges with the characteristics of manufacturing problems that DI approach is suited to. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.