ABSTRACT

۱٫ INTRODUCTION

۲٫ BACKGROUND

۳٫ PERSPECTIVES OF IOT IN LOGISTICS

۴٫ KEY IOT-BASED APPLICATIONS IN LOGISTICS

۵٫ KEY CHALLENGES OF IOT ADOPTION IN LOGISTICS

۶٫ CONCLUSIONS

FUNDING

NOTES

REFERENCES

Abstract

     The Internet of Things (IoT) vision enables multiple of resource-constrained embedded devices, objects, and humans to connect together through the Internet protocol for a ubiquitous data exchange. Logistics is considered to be a key player poised from this vision to achieve the full visibility and transparency through leveraging the pervasive interconnectivity to collect reliable and safe real-time data. In addition, the valuable information extracted and transformed from the IoT data can be exploited to create intelligent services and applications to improve the logistics activities as well as the overall performance of logistics operations. This paper aims at reviewing the state-of-the-art applications of IoT in the logistics sector. Although the adoption of IoT potentially gains huge benefits, there still exist barriers preventing the full adoption of IoT in the logistics. This paper also discusses such challenges that promise to expose a wide range of open research regarding the integration of IoT in the logistics domain.

Introduction

     In reality, logistics is increasingly identified as a core industry sector promoting the strong development of the economy as well as other relevant sectors such as transportation, education. Due to various points of view and considered scopes, there exists a variety of definitions regarding the logistics. For example, the authors in [1] defined logistics as “the process of planning, implementing and controlling the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods, services and related information from their point of origin to point of consumption for the purpose of conforming to customer requirements”. Meanwhile, Islam et al. pointed out that “logistics involves an integrated approach with the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging, and recently added security” [۲]. They also sketched out five central components in the logistics managements including transportation, warehousing, inventory control, packaging, and information processing. From a broad view, many researchers such as authors in [3] considered the logistics as a combination of three flows, namely, physical flow, information flow, and financial flow. In this view, the ultimate role of logistics management is to ensure a full synchronization of three flows throughout the involved logistics activities, actors, and stakeholders. Regardless of multiple perspectives, the above concepts emphasize on the importance of information to achieve the ultimate goal of logistics services: right products are delivered to right customers at the right time at the right place and in the right condition [4]. The information will become more significant in the management of modern logistics since the logistics processes became significantly more complex and dynamic due to ever-increasing global competition, shorter product life-cycles, mass customization, and stricter quality requirements of customers.

Conclusions

    The application of IoT concept has brought the transformation of logistics into innovated model, which potentially drives a greater operation efficiency and sustainability thanks to advanced abilities of IoT-enabled technologies. This paper, firstly reviews developments of current logistics that encompasses several paradigms such as smart logistics, green logistics, and physical Internet. Toward obtaining a global efficiency and sustainability, such logistics models are relevant heavily on ICT to optimize the logistics activities efficiency through efficient exploitations of shared information. Particularly, recent IoT technologies that are recognized as an ultimate means for information exchange solution herald new ways of greater efficiency gains. Thus, this promises a potential perspective with respect to the application of IoT in the logistics. This paper also describes the perspective through sketching out an IoT ecosystem that can be applied for the logistics fields. The system encompasses key enabling IoT technologies with data-driven orientation, and key building blocks including smart objects, smart networks, and smart logistics information management system. On the basis of IoT ecosystem, the state-of-the-art development of IoT-based solutions is presented to highlight their applications to the logistics activities such as product condition monitoring, warehousing, freight transportation, and last-mile delivery. However, the practical integration of IoT-logistics pair is still in an infancy stage since there are still many immature in systematic, network, and collaboration perspectives. These barriers are discussed intensively for further open researches regarding new development space IoT-based solutions for the logistics enterprises.