Resource Management with RFID Technology in Automatic Warehouse System

Warehouse operation has become a critical activity in supply chain to outperform competitors on customer service, lead times and costs. However, managers often meet difficulties in formulating good resource utilization plan due to shortage of comprehensive resource information. This paper proposes a resource management system with RFID technology, which can access to the real-time position and operation process information of material handling equipments, as well as some load item information. This warehouse management system is designed to select the most suitable resource usage package for handling warehouse operation orders. An experiment warehouse is built in the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences to validate the effectiveness of the warehouse management system. The results show increase in rack space utilization and loading speed as well as decrease in work-related errors and operation costs in comparison with a similar system without RFID technology