Cellular Warehousing for Omnichannel Retailing: Internet of Things and Physical Internet Perspectives

EasyChair Preprint 299

Abstract

Significant expansions have been reflected worldwide in business reports of major E-commerce players such as Alibaba, Amazon and JD.com. Omnichannel retailing is an evolutional variant of E-commerce by providing consistent, unique and contextual brand experiences across multiple customer-aware touchpoints. Despite all the efforts, goods still move slowly and damages are a concern along with the booming omnichannel retailing. Meanwhile, high variety and variability of omnichannel retailing orders complicate the implementation of automated facilities. To deal with these phenomenal and challenging problems, a new warehousing paradigm named cellular warehousing is proposed. The concept of cellular warehousing is adapted from cellular manufacturing, taking full advantage of the similarities between online-offline orders and/or their items as well as standardization and common processing. To sum up, the paper will firstly introduce the key processes within the IoT/PI-based cellular warehouse, and then cover the major elements to support the operation. Finally, three representative case studies of Alibaba, JD.com and COSCO will be presented to verify the necessity to transform the existing warehouses to cellular warehouses.

Keyphrases: Cellular Manufacturing, Cellular Warehousing, Internet of Things, Logistics, Omnichannel Retailing, Physical Internet

@booklet{EasyChair:299,
  author    = {Xin Wang and Xiang T.R. Kong and George Q. Huang and Hao Luo},
  title     = {Cellular Warehousing for Omnichannel Retailing: Internet of Things and Physical Internet Perspectives},
  doi       = {10.29007/swkg},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 299},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2018}}