Smart warehouses : a sociotechnical perspective

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss the smart warehouse concept and the challenges it entails with the increasing digitalization of the supply chain. The principal enabling technologies that play a major role in the progression toward smart warehouses are identified and discussed in the context of the changes occurring across business, industry, and the retail economy. The warehouse processes affected and potential influences of the technologies on warehouse management and operations are described. This chapter focuses on one of the most important process steps in the smart warehouse, order-picking, which is currently subject to major developments and transformations. Using a technological grid, four types of order-picking system are derived, which systematize how technologies can support human operators in warehouses to reduce physical workload and/or improve cognitive ergonomics. The four system types are classified based on supportive (digital) and substitutive (automation) technologies. The impacts of increased digitalization in warehouses on the physical, cognitive, perceptual, and psychosocial human factors are examined from a sociotechnical perspective. These manifold influences are exemplified for the case of a collaborative order-picking system and broken down using an analysis framework that can be used for the systematic development of sociotechnical systems in the digitalization of the supply chain.