An RFID-based digital warehouse management system in the tobacco industry: a case study

Abstract

This paper proposes a digital warehouse management system (DWMS) in the tobacco industry based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The DWMS helps warehouse managers to achieve better inventory control, as well as to improve the operation efficiency. In this system, a set of basic events and storage/retrieval rules are defined as event-condition-action (ECA) rules to improve the feasibility and flexibility of DWMS. By using RFID technology, the DWMS enables a plane warehouse to achieve visualised inventory management, automatic storage/retrieval assignment and high accuracy of inventory control as an automatic warehouse. A case in the tobacco industry is studied to illustrate the feasibility and rationality of the proposed system. Based on the ECA rules, a storage/retrieval methodology is proposed to improve the storage/retrieval operations. The results of this case study illustrate that RFID-DWMS can help a plane warehouse to improve operation efficiency, enhance the utilisation of warehouse capacity, increase inventory accuracy and reduce manpower and loading time significantly.

Keywords:

• radio frequency identification
• digital warehouse management system
• storage/retrieval assignment
• event-condition-action
• digital pallet
• digital shelf

Acknowledgement

This work is partially supported by the National Nature Science Foundation under grant 60674085.