Internet of things

Today’s systems of internal material flow must cope with high demands: an in-creasing variety and shorter innovation and product life cycles lead to difficulties in predicting order loads and structures. The order-based production is becoming increasingly important. Against this background, material handling systems have to be dynamically adjustable and thereby cause the lowest possible cost. Approaches of modularization and decentralization both in the field of control software and in the design of conveyor systems promise great potential in terms of flexibility, robustness and reusability. Technological developments in the areas of sensors, data processing and storage, communication, locating and identification support this trend and enable new, innovative solutions for transportation tasks in logistic systems - including swarm-like conveyor systems.

The vision of the “Internet of Things” describes networked, interactive objects which are capable of autonomous decision-taking. The potentials of this vision for logistics in the automotive and food sector go from tracking and tracing throughout the supply-chain, via quality assurance and monitoring through to new service models and consequently completely novel sources of revenue. Key elements of the “Internet of Things” such as auto-identification technology or sensors are already mature and ready to be used in logistics. On the basis of a series of industry case studies, this article describes the current situation in industry with regards to these technologies and identifies future potential. To facilitate the analysis, it presents an instrument by which the level of implementation of the technologies of the “Internet of Things” can be measured.

Due to growing demands on logistic processes, increasing transportation costs and a crowded, highly competitive market, margins in this service sector are shrinking. In order to survive, logistics providers will have to reduce internal costs, for example by means of logistic optimization (e.g., scheduling of pickup and delivery). Equally important, they also need to offer their customers additional value-added services, such as tracking and tracing (e.g., temperature logging within the cold chain). These requirements can be seamlessly supported across multiple industries by the event-driven EPCglobal Network.

The international exchange of goods and products is growing steadily. Information technologies now in use are unable to sufficiently organize the flows of goods both more securely and more reliably: Losses from misdirected containers, pallets and luggage run in the tens and hundreds of millions. Modern solutions not only have to provide the capability to positively identify mobile objects of different kinds and in changing environmental conditions but also to localize them, communicate with them, navigate them and control them.

Transportation and sortation of bins and similar units in conveyor systems have reached a high level of automation. Nevertheless the combination of state-of-the-art technologies can breed innovative solutions for typical problems arising in planning and operation of such installations. The source of upcoming developments is an increasing distribution of control functionalities.