Warehouse Control in the Age of the Internet of Things

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the September-October 2014 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

September-October 2014

2014 marks the 10 year anni­ver­sary of the Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 ranking. This year we have a diverse set of large, global companies with mature, demand-driven supply chains. There are lessons to be learned from these supply chain leaders, many of whom have led their industries over the past decade.

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In the age of the Internet of Things, an increasing number of materials handling systems (MHS), and even components of the larger systems, are gaining both sensors and intelligence. However, existing warehouse control systems (WCS) have not been engineered for this new age. Going forward, we believe that warehouse management (WMS) and warehouse control systems architectures need to be re-conceptualized to enable optimum warehouse performance.

Materials Handling Systems and the Internet of Things
In one definition of the term “Internet of Things,” almost all objects have sensors, connectivity to a broader environment, and intelligence. Sometimes the object has just a sliver of intelligence; but it can be much more substantial. Objects can be products, equipment, containers, or other things as well. For our purposes, the objects we are focused on are forms of materials handling equipment.

Traditionally, we said that warehouses were operated in either a manual, semi-automated, or highly automated fashion. In a manual warehouse, pickers used carts, forklifts, and other “dumb” forms of carriage to go to picking locations, gather the inventory, and deliver those goods to the shipping dock. However, forklifts are becoming intelligent. With the right kind of control system, a warehouse using forklifts becomes semi-automated.

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