Warehouse management technologies

Purpose – Aims to discover the different technologies used in warehouse stock control.Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins with a review of optical and radio‐frequency product‐labelling technologies, and then examines various devices and systems for reading these labels and integrating stock control into back‐office databases. It then looks at techniques for finding the goods within the warehouse, from simple address labels to radar positioning and inertial navigation, considering both operator‐based and guided vehicle handling systems.Findings – Labelling technologies facilitate automatic product identification. Rugged handheld computers with wireless communications give real‐time capability and integrate stock control into wider software systems for efficient resource management. Speech synthesis provides one man‐machine interface enabling workers to order‐pick under database control. Automated readers record products entering and leaving the warehouse, theoretically removing the need for stoc...