Cloud and IoT Applications in Material Handling Automation and Intralogistics

Stavros T. Ponis and Orestis K. Efthymiou
Additional contact information
Stavros T. Ponis: School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University Athens, Heroon Polytechniou 9, Zografos, 15780 Athens, Greece
Orestis K. Efthymiou: School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University Athens, Heroon Polytechniou 9, Zografos, 15780 Athens, Greece

Logistics, 2020, vol. 4, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: During the last decade, digitalization has borne tremendous changes on the way we live and do business. Industry 4.0, the new industrial revolution, is merging the physical, digital and virtual worlds through emerging technologies that collide with each other and create a distinctive paradigm shift. Even though the topic of Industry 4.0, has attracted significant attention during the past few years, literature in this subject area is still limited. The main objective of this paper is to study the current state of the art and identify major trends and research shortcomings. To that end, the authors conducted a methodological literature review based primarily on the SCOPUS bibliographic database. The review returned 49 relative papers dealing with the paper’s subject area. Through a thorough study of the selected papers, four dominant literature categories were recognized and discussed in detail. According to the literature reviewed, it is evident that massive changes are underway for warehouses and intralogistics facilities. Still, despite the intense discussion and appeal of the subject, one of the most important challenges in the scientific area under study, as the literature highlights, is the absence of a matching, to its significance, number of real-life applications. To that end, this paper provides a detailed description of a Cloud-based IoT application drawn from a Distribution Center (DC) that supplies retail home furnishing and sporting goods products to stores in Greece and the Balkan region, with the objective to showcase the feasibility of such an investment, highlight its potential and provide motivation to practitioners to evaluate and proceed in similar technological investments.

Keywords: cloud computing; Industry 4.0; Internet of Things; logistics; material handling systems; smart factory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L8 L80 L81 L86 L87 L9 L90 L91 L92 L93 L98 L99 M1 M10 M11 M16 M19 R4 R40 R41 R49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6290/4/3/22/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6290/4/3/22/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlogis:v:4:y:2020:i:3:p:22-:d:416593

Access Statistics for this article

Logistics is currently edited by Ms. Mavis Li

More articles in Logistics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().