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Automation in warehouses has been improved in a very certain manner, combining sensors for perception of the environment and mapping of the warehouse. The most common characteristic, which makes the products and the pallet rack cells discriminative, are the barcodes placed on them. This means that the warehouse management system should successfully perceive all the necessary information of the detected barcodes, which also includes their position in the warehouse and build a barcode map of the environment. For this process a barcode reader is needed, with extended capabilities such as estimation of the 3-dimensional coordinates of the barcodes. The main idea of this research was the development of a system to be used in future work, placed on the roof of a forklift, which will be able to detect the barcodes and localize itself using an existing map of the warehouse and update new information in this map. However, the purpose of this project was the investigation of a suitable system for barcode mapping. The main challenge of this project was the development of a barcode reader, which fulfills all the referred capabilities and the comparison with a commercial reader in order to evaluate the performance of the system. In this project a barcode reader was developed using software libraries and a camera for industrial use. The performance of the system was compared with a commercial barcode reader. Moreover, an algorithm was implemented, for estimation of the position of each detected barcode, with reference to the position of the camera's lens.  According to the results of all the investigations the performance of the developed system was quiet satisfying and promising. The comparison of the two systems proved that the commercial barcode reader had a better performance than the implemented system. However, it lacked the ability to provide the required information for mapping also the flexibility for integration with other systems. Overall, the developed system proved to be suitable for integration with a warehouse management system for barcode mapping of the environment.

Thesis. 1978. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND DEWEY. / Bibliography: leaf 101. / M.S.

Physical distribution is one of the key functions in logistics systems, involving the flow of products from manufacturing plants or distribution centers through the network of transportation to consumers. The function is very costly, especially for the distribution industries. During the past decades, the significance of physical distribution has increased enormously in both economic and managerial aspects. Several firms have realized that an efficiency improvement and a cost control of physical distribution would provide a potential for cost reduction and hence profit improvement. However, the customer satisfaction cannot be disregarded, since the focus on reducing cost often decreases the customer service level in many cases. A compromised strategy which lowers the cost of physical distribution and accounts for customer satisfaction must be sought. In this research, an effort to improve distribution strategies and reduce the distribution cost for the multi-product, multi-depot periodic distribution problem is made, while maintaining the desired customer service levels. In industry practice, distribution centers typically operate independently within their own territories only. However, it may be beneficial to allow those distribution centers to operate interdependently, particularly when the product supplies are limited at some distribution centers. In such cases, the distributors may satisfy customers' requests by delivering products from other distribution centers that hold more supplies. The interaction of interdependent operations among distribution centers, which have not been used in the industrial applications so far, is investigated. A mixed-integer linear programming model is formulated to represent this multi-product, multi-depot periodic distribution problem. Three tabu-search heuristics with different applications of long-term memory are developed for solving the problem. The performance of the heuristics is evaluated by comparing the solutions obtained with the optimal solutions or lower bounds from the regular branch-and-bound method and fast lower-bound finding techniques developed in this research. The heuristics provide good-quality solutions in a much shorter time than those methods. The performance of the three tabu-search heuristics is compared using statistical experiments based on the randomized complete block design and Tukey's Honestly Significant Differences. The experimental results show that the tabu-search heuristic with the use of long-term memory for diversification process outperforms the others. The heuristic is further applied to investigate the impact of interdependent operations among distribution centers. The results reveal that the interdependent operations among distribution centers provide a significant cost saving over the independent operations among distribution centers, especially for large-size problems. / Graduation date: 2004

Graduation date: 1998

Thesis (M.S.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Industrial and Systems Engineering." Includes bibliographical references (p. 46-47).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-71).

The thesis aims to investigate how the development of Internet consumerism in the age of web 2.0 shifted the conventional manufacturer and customer relationship, and transforms the consumer’s behavior inherited from Fordism and post Fordism period hence re-shaping the urban and logistics landscape. Web2.0 emphasis interaction and exchanging information between individuals and business corporates, two major fundamental changes to traditional consumer’s behavior would be discussed in the thesis. Firstly, the development of online selling connects manufacturers directly to their customers, where retail front is no longer a place for simple transaction but a place where it emphasis customers experience. Secondly, web2.0 promoted the consumers to consumer’s activities (C2C), which allows the exchanging of physical resources between individual more frequently. The C2C activities transform the consumer’s behavior, which in turn transform the landscape of consumption. Two of the effects brought by the Internet consumerism on the site of consumption, i.e. branding of space and territory merging (collistive programme) of landscape will be discussed in the thesis. To seam line the existing logistics system for the consumers to consumers trading activity and enhance the convenience of online shopping experience, a new business model will be proposed after series of studies on the existing logistics system regarding the Internet consumerism. The proposed business model is operated by a third party logistics company i.e. Fedex, UPS and DHL etc. There are three major components in the proposed system, regional distribution hubs on a district level in Hong Kong, drop off points scattered in a community level and vehicles which serves as mobile store. Detail operation of the system will be discussed in the thesis. Finally, a regional distribution hub in Kwun Tong and several drops off points will be selected for the design execution. The thesis aims to implement the above ideas of territory merging and collistive programme with a design project and illustrate the establishment of brands with a landscape design. / published_or_final_version / Architecture / Master / Master of Landscape Architecture

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