Auto-ID enabled real-time decision support system for fleet management in industrial parks

Abstract

Industrial parks, consisting of manufacturers and associated services such as transport and warehousing, have played an important role in stimulating the economic and industrial development. Enterprises are able to share common facilities, services and infrastructures. It becomes a common practice for manufacturers to use third-party logistics to handle the flow of materials both within and outside the industrial park. This thesis proposed an Auto-ID enabled real-time decision support solution for fleet management in industrial parks. This research investigates a fleet management decision framework that is suitable for industrial parks, and discusses the design and development of Fleet Advanced Planning and Scheduling (FAPS) Shell Platform, which is an innovative framework for different stakeholders in collaborating decisions and operations in industrial parks. The proposed FAPS Shell Platform integrates Auto-ID and telecommunication devices, which are deployed in an operation environment to collect real-time information. Within the service platform, an Agent-based Information Service (AIS) is proposed and developed for managing heterogeneous data sources. The AIS accesses and integrates information from different data sources for supporting upper-level decisions. Finally, a hierarchical transportation planning and scheduling model is proposed for minimizing the use of vehicles in a flexible and practical manner. This research has made the following achievements and contributions. Firstly, the scalable and re-configurable FAPS Shell Platform infrastructure provides a common communication channel for industrial stakeholders in transportation decisions and operations collaboratively. The development of the platform is based on several core technologies to achieve seamless dual-way connectivity and interoperability among enterprise information systems (EISs), Auto-ID devices and other heterogeneous data sources. Secondly, an innovative heterogeneous data sources querying mechanism is designed to access different kinds of data sources, such as web services, databases, Auto-ID devices and EISs. In addition, the AIS provides a platform for users managing their different data sources with several visualization tools. With the use of AIS, comprehensive and real-time information can be gathered easily and those information are able to support upper-level decisions. Thirdly, an Auto-ID enabled operation environment solution is designed and deployed in the industrial park. Items and pallets are wrapped as a smart object (SO) and different types of device gateways are deployed in key value adding points. With the supporting of SOs and devices gateways, real-time operation data can be feedback to the backend server for monitoring and controlling purposes. Finally, a hierarchical transportation planning and scheduling model is proposed for synchronizing material flow between supply hubs and manufacturers. The model can improve the flexibility of the planning and scheduling results.