Robot-enabled execution system for perishables auction logistics
| Pages | 1954-1971 |
| Date | 16 October 2017 |
| Published date | 16 October 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-03-2016-0114 |
| Author | Xiang T.R. Kong,Ray Y. Zhong,Gangyan Xu,George Q. Huang |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
Robot-enabled execution system
for perishables auction logistics
Xiang T.R. Kong
HKU-ZIRI Lab for Physical Internet,
Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Ray Y. Zhong
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, and
Gangyan Xu and George Q. Huang
HKU-ZIRI Lab for Physical Internet,
Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong,
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to propose a concept of cloud auction robot (CAR) and its execution
platform for transforming perishable food supply chain management. A new paradigm of goods-to-person
auction execution model is proposed based on CARs. This paradigm can shift the management of traditional
manual working to automated execution with great space and time saving. A scalable CAR-enabled execution
system (CARES) is presented to manage logistics workflows, tasks and behavior of CAR-Agents in handling
the real-time events and associated data.
Design/methodology/approach –An Internet of Things enabled auction environment is designed.
The robot is used to pick up and deliver the auction products and commends are given to the robot in
real-time. CARES architecture is proposed while integrating three core services from auction workflow
management, auction task management, to auction execution control. A system prototype was developed to
show its execution through physical emulations and experiments.
Findings –The CARES could well schedule the tasks for each robot to minimize their waiting time. The total
execution time is reduced by 33 percent on average. Space utilization for each auction studio is improved by
about 50 percent per day.
Originality/value –The CAR-enabled execution model and system is simulated and verifiedin a ubiquitous
auction environment so as to upgrade the perishable food supply chain management into a new level which is
automated and real-time. The proposed system is flexible to cope with different auction scenarios, such as
different auction mechanisms and processes, with high reconfigurability and scalability.
Keywords Supply chain management, Multi-agent, Perishables auction logistics,
Robot-enabled execution system
Paper type Research paper
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 117 No. 9, 2017
pp. 1954-1971
Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-03-2016-0114
Received 23 March 2016
Revised 20 May 2016
Accepted 25 June 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
© Xiang T.R. Kong, Ray Y. Zhong, Gangyan Xu and George Q. Huang. Published by Emerald
Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0)
licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article
( for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original
publication and au thors. The full term s of this licence may be se en at http://cre ativecommons.or g/
licences/by/4.0/legalcode
The authors would like to acknowledge the Zhejiang Provincial, Hangzhou Municipal, Lin’an City
governments, ITF Innovation and Technology Support Programme of Hong Kong Government
(ITP/079/16LP) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 71671116).
1954
IMDS
117,9
1. Introduction
As the increasing attention paid by the modern consumers, food that is fresh, safe,
nutritious, and palatable brings new opportunities to the supply chain management which
represents the management of the food production, distribution, marketing activities, and
recycling (Opara, 2003; Wang et al., 2015). Thus, the perishable supply chain management
(PSCM) plays a critical role in ensuring the demands. However, perishable products such as
fruit, vegetables, seafood, etc. are very difficult to handle through traditional supply chain,
for example, the vibration of trucks will cause mechanical damage to fruit and vegetables
(Nakandala et al., 2016).
Auction is widely used for fast trading of perishable products to achieve fair and
transparent price, especially for perishable agricultural commodities such as fruits and
fresh fish (Kambil and Van Heck, 1998). This trend remains strong in the Netherlands with
transactions fo r 12.4 billion plan ts and flowers each year (The New York Times, 2014).
Major third-party auction service providers such as FloraHolland have
solved technological problems of dealing with millions of simultaneous biddings
(www.floraholland.com). But logistics that fulfills the massive and lumpy auction
demandsisstillchallengeable(Qinet al., 2014). The concept of auction logistics (AL) is
thus proposed to transform and upgrade the PSCM using advanced technologies such as
Internet of Things (IoT), robot-enabled processes, and cloud-based services (Huang and
Kong, 2013; Zhong et al., 2013; Qiu et al., 2014).
Three phases are defined in the AL. The first phase is pre-auction consolidation on
inbound goods from different farming suppliers. Auction orders can initiate the process in
an auction logistics center (ALC). The second phase is auction studios where auction
products are picked, traded, and dispatched by delivering the perishable products with
trolleys. The third phase is post-auction sortation and packing on outbound goods based on
customer orders. The logistics operations at the first and third phases are relatively mature
while the second phase often creates the bottleneck under bulky auction demands in limited
transaction windows.
Practically, most of existing auction execution activities are still relying on traditional
manual operationsor fixed material handling systems. It has beenextremely labor intensive,
often involving long distance of auction trolley movements at different positions. Such
systems are structured with the limitedflexibility which is unable to cope with lumpyauction
demands (Huang et al., 2015). Moreover, auction execution workflows change frequently in
terms of different auction mechanisms. However, all auction tasks are centrally assigned by a
traditional allocation method and it typically requires a huge and expensive effort
to implement, maintain, or reconfigure the control application (Zhang et al., 2015). Finally ,
due to the shortage of real-time interaction in the current auction ambient, the auction
schedule and execution is often inconsistent (Kong, Chen, Luo and Huang, 2015a).
To address the above challenges, this paper introduces IoT-enabled cloud robots for
auction execution. The cloud robotsin auction execution can utilizetheir cognitive capabilities
and share their knowledge by connecting themselves to cloud infrastructures (Kuner, 2010;
Xu et al., 2015). This study will contribute to the PSCM by the following aspects:
(1) using cloud auction robot (CAR) to achieve a new paradigm of goods-to-person in a
ubiquitous auction execution environment;
(2) using a centralized, reconfigurable, and scalable cloud execution system for dealing
with the global and complicated decisions in auction execution from workflow
configuration, task allocation to auction navigation and control; and
(3) implementing and evaluating the proposed CAR-enabled execution system (CARES)
via a case study.
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