Intelligent Management of Chemical Warehouses with RFID Systems

Abstract

At present, most chemical warehouses rely on human management, which is a time-consuming and laborious process. Therefore, it is very meaningful to use radio frequency identification (RFID) systems for the intelligent management of chemicals. Detecting the remaining amount of chemicals is an important process in the management of a chemical warehouse. It helps managers find the chemicals that are going to run out and replenish them in time. However, in a traditional chemical warehouse, managers usually inspect each chemical on the shelf in turn manually, which is a waste of time and labor. Although some solutions using RFID technology have been proposed, they are expensive and difficult to deploy in a real environment. In order to solve this problem, we propose an intelligent system called the RF-Detector in this paper, which combines robotics and RFID technology. An RFID reader and an antenna are installed on the robot, which achieves automatic scanning of the chemicals. The RF-Detector can achieve two functions: One function is to detect the remaining amount of chemicals using the changes in received signal strength indication (RSSI) and read rate, and the other is to locate chemicals using the phase curve, so that managers can quickly find the chemicals with an insufficient amount remaining. In this paper we implement the RF-Detector and evaluate its performance. The experimental results show that the RF-Detector achieves about 93% detection accuracy and 92% positioning accuracy for chemicals.

Industry 4.0 technologies and sustainable warehousing: a systematic literature review and future research agenda

“…Other remarkable benefits from the implementation of IoT in warehousing include increased visibility, reliability and accuracy of warehouse processes (Mostafa et al. , 2019; Natanaree and Sriyos, 2014; Zhao et al. , 2019).…”

“…To effectively achieve three pillars of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) in warehouse management, in recent times, Industry 4.0 technologies have emerged as gamechanging tools (Mostafa et al, 2019;Ali and Govindan, 2021). In terms of economic sustainability, the fully automated Industry 4.0 technologies support economic growth (without negative impact on society and environment) of warehousing by reducing energy, water and material waste, production cost, paper consumption, errors and accidental damages (Mostafa et al, 2019;Natanaree and Sriyos, 2014;Zhao et al, 2019). For instance, IoT supported information sharing and visibility on order picking, loading, shipping reduces chances of errors, damages and product rejections, thereby reducing the risks of wasting the resources that are utilised in the manufacturing and distribution of a product (Ding et al, 2020).…”

“…IoT enabled RFID technology also helps to implement lean philosophy through reduction of processing time, quality deterioration and waste in warehouse operations(Chen et al, 2013;Tjahaja et al, 2021). Other remarkable benefits from the implementation of IoT in warehousing include increased visibility, reliability and accuracy of warehouse processes(Mostafa et al, 2019;Natanaree and Sriyos, 2014;Zhao et al, 2019).Reaidy et al…”

Wireless Systems and Networks in the IoT

“…The third paper introduces a system for the efficient management and positioning of chemicals in chemical warehouses [3]. The proposed RF-Detector system combines robotics and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to detect the remaining amount and localize chemicals in an autonomous fashion.…”

Cost-Effective Wireless Sensors for Detection of Package Opening and Tampering

“…A passive RFID tag, consisting of a small lowprofile antenna and an RFID chip, receives energy from the nearby RFID reader and it responds by sending its unique ID information back to the reader. There has been a growing trend to leverage the low-cost, lightweight of RFID tags for various sensing applications in addition to its conventional role of identification and tracking, for example, temperature sensing [6]- [10], light sensing [11]- [13], tilt sensing [9], [14], [15], strain sensing [16]- [18], humid sensing [19], [20], chemical sensing [21]- [23], screw relaxing detection [24], flooding warning [25], current sensing [26], crack monitoring [27], biophysical sensing [28]- [32], aerial vehicles application [33], drowsy driving detection [34] and RF pen [35] . To guarantee the low-cost of the whole sensor platform that bulit on the RFID tag, that sensor should be compact, and the whole circuitry should operate without a battery.…”