A Warehouse Built for the Future

Author:

Scott, Emma

Area of Honors:

Supply Chain and Information Systems

Degree:

Bachelor of Science

Document Type:

Thesis

Thesis Supervisors:

Robert Alexander Novack, Thesis Supervisor
Saurabh Bansal, Thesis Honors Advisor

Keywords:

Internet of Things
IoT
Smart Warehousing
Warehouse Automation
Warehouse of the Future

Abstract:

This thesis will provide an overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the possible use cases of it in the warehousing space. Within each use case, examples of the existing technologies, as well as the respective benefits and challenges associated with it, will be discussed. Previous research conducted in this space has primarily focused on a specific use case, or the IoT industry as a whole. This thesis aims to compile these ideas to share a holistic perspective of what future warehousing will look like once IoT is incorporated. The methodology for this research primarily consists of gathering information through publicly available sources. However, due to the newness of the technologies being discussed, there is a limited number of formalized research papers. As such, this thesis will supplement the Penn State Library sources with the websites of the providers of these technologies. This research produced an as-is (Figure 1) and to-be (Figure 15) process maps of IoT integration in warehousing. As demonstrated by these process maps and the accumulated research, IoT can be incorporated into nearly every aspect of the warehousing process, producing benefits that are rather significant and intriguing.