Abstract
Supply chain management is a complex system that involves suppliers, manufacturers, distribution centres and customers, with the flow of information, and physical raw material towards the manufacture of consumable products to customers. Distributions centres are at the core of the supply chain process and information processing for distribution centre’s warehouse management requires advanced information processing to ensure efficiency. Industry 4.0 technologies & decision support systems (DSS) can potentially improve warehouse management processes. There are benefits that come with the implementation of the industry 4.0 technologies, however sometimes there are obstructive barriers to the implementation of industry 4.0.
This work outlines the benefits and analyzes the barriers that obstruct full utilization of industry 4.0 technologies within supply chain’s warehouse management. This research follows a systematic literature review and a mixed method of research that looked at searching and extraction of information from case studies with focus on warehouse management and industry 4.0 technologies. The approach was to collect recent literature over a period of 2019 to 2022. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) framework was used to guide the data collection. An analysis method is used to analyse the most prominent benefits and barriers to industry 4.0 technology implementation. The mean citation index is computed for the references that make mention of the benefits and barriers. Benefits and barriers are ranked in order of importance using the Pareto analysis.
The results outline a total of 21 benefits identified from case-studies. These benefits were ranked in terms of frequency of mention in the articles included for the study and the top 5 important benefits that drive the implementation of industry 4.0 technologies were identified as; improved efficiency - RFID (N1), ability to trace warehouse products stored - RFID (N2), availability of real-time data - IoT (N3), availability of real-time data - RFID (N4) and ensuring processing efficiency - autonomous robots (N5)”. The results of this paper also identified a total of 10 barriers to the implementation of industry 4.0 technologies in warehouse management. The prominent barriers were the high cost of the system throughout its life cycle (B1), limited environment and layout problems (B2), resource constraints (B3), and lack of security (B4).
Moreover, management should be informed about the benefits that could be acquired if these barriers were eliminated, and industry 4.0 technologies are embraced. A proper implementation framework that will guide the process of implementation could aid organizations that want to embrace industry 4.0 and its technologies to skip the step of extensive research on benefits and how to overcome barriers to implementation.
Keywords: Industry 4.0; Warehouse management; Supply chain.