本科毕业论文-某公司会计信息系统设计方案(7)

附录A：英译汉

Integration of reverse logistics activities within a supply chain information system

In the supply chain, a warehouse is an essential component for linking the chain partners. It is necessary to allocate warehouse resources efficiently and effectively to enhance the productivity and reduce the operation costs of the warehouse. Therefore, warehouse management systems (WMSs) have been developed for handling warehouse resources and monitoring warehouse operations. However, it is difficult to update daily operations of inventory level, locations of forklifts and stock keeping units (SKUs) in real-time by using the bar-code-based or manual-based warehouse management systems. In this paper, RFID technology is adopted to facilitate the collection and sharing of data in a warehouse. Tests are performed fore valuate.

the reading performance of both the active and passive RFID apparatus. With the help of the testing results, the efficient radio frequency cover ranges of the readers are examined for formulating a radio frequency identification case-based logistics resource management system (R-LRMS). The capabilities of R-LRMS are demonstrated in GSL Limited. Three objectives are achieved: (i) a simplification of RFID adoption procedure, (ii) an improvement in the visibility of warehouse operations and (iii) an enhancement of the productivity of the warehouse. The successful case example proved the feasibility of R-LRMS in real working practice.

1. Introduction

Due to the effects of globalization, current supply chain networks are increasingly complex. Logisticians have to deal with numerous channel partners who may be located a great distance apart and who request a greater than ever diversity of products, and who need to deal with more statutory requirements and documentation than ever before (Vogt, Pienaar, & De Wit, 2005). Therefore, the fulfillment of customers’ demands with good quality products, on time product delivery and superior logistics services becomes difficult to achieve. In general, enterprises have adopted different approaches for managing the supply chain activities which include material sourcing, production scheduling, warehousing and product distribution. Logistics resource management (LRM) is one of the approaches for managing the activities of the whole supply chain efficiently. It facilitates the allocation of logistics resources to appropriate logistics functions and controls the movement of

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raw materials, work-in-progress and finished goods, from suppliers to customers in an efficient manner. In doing this, supply chain partners are kept satisfied.

A warehouse is an essential link between the upstream (production) and downstream (distribution) entities, and most of the warehouse operations are either labor- or capital-intensive. The performance of these operations not only affects the productivity and operation costs of a warehouse, but also the whole supply chain. Thus, information systems such as warehouse management systems (WMSs) were adopted for collecting data of warehouse operations in order to solve various problems in a warehouse, such as material handling problems. However, the current WMSs are incapable of providing timely and accurately warehouse operations information because they contain no feature of real-time and automatic data retrieval. Instead, the systems rely heavily on warehouse staff members to input operational information manually or through bar-code systems. Hence, incorrect information is unavoidably input from time to time as human error is inevitable (Sexton, Thomas, & Helm Reich, 2000). Moreover, it is difficult to formulate reliable material handling solutions to handle different orders either by warehouse staff members (who may be biased) or through WMSs (Chow, Choy, Lee, & Lau, 2006). Therefore, it is essential to propose an intelligent system with real-time and automatic data retrieval features for solving material handling problems. Fig. 1 shows the common problems which frequently occur in a warehouse due to human error and out-of-date information. Based on the input of incorrect information in inventory level, warehouse capacity and storage location, inaccurate reports are generated from WMSs for warehouse staff members to make unreliable material handling solutions for managing the daily warehouse operations

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In this paper, a set of RFID reading performance tests is performed. The tags are placed in different positions and attached to different materials for evaluating the reading performance of the active and the passive RFID devices. Based on the test results, the efficient radio frequency cover ranges of the readers are examined and the most suitable locations for the installation of the RFID devices are determined. Besides, a RFID case-based logistics resource management system (R-LRMS) is proposed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of order-picking operations in a warehouse by means of formulating a reliable RFID technology implementation plan. This will enable warehouse resources to be located on a real-time basis and instant material handling solutions will be suggested for handling the customer orders automatically. The feature of real-time and automatic data retrieval in the proposed system is support by the RFID technology, which also facilitates constructing an effective triangular localization scheme to determine the exact locations of warehouse resources.

The collected data is then compared with the attributes stored in an embedded case-based engine to determine the appropriate material handling equipment to handle the order-picking operations. Moreover, a material handling solution formulation model is constructed by mathematic algorithms to generate the shortest pick-up sequence for the appropriate material handling equipment. In doing this, the objectives of maximizing the productivity of warehouse and minimizing the operation costs in a warehouse are achieved.

2. Literature review

2.1. Current approach in managing logistics resources

According to (Kithara, 2003) and (Liu et al., 2005), a supply chain is a valuable information sharing channel among the suppliers, manufacturing and storage facilities, distributors and customers for facilitating the key business activities of the sale, production and delivery of a particular product. Thus, the main principle of supply chain management (SCM) is to integrate effectively the material flows and related information within the demand and supply processes (Soroor & Tarokh, 2006). However, due to the global extension of supply chain networks, enterprises need to collaborate with suppliers, customers, or even competitors in different time zones, across numerous organizational boundaries, and in a variety of cultures. Under these circumstances, the challenge of allocating production, transportation, and inventory resources to satisfy demand is daunting (Smirch-Levi, Kaminsky, & Simchi-Levi, 2004).

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Recent trends towards the management of logistics resources have the potential to minimize the impact of the physical dispersion of supply chain members. The objective of logistics resources management (LRM) is to determine the most effective approach for allocating the appropriate logistics resources to different logistics functions, facilitate information flow and share knowledge through a supply pipeline, provide feasible collaborative channels for supply chain partners to provide superior customer services (Ross, 2003). In LRM, five logistics operations areas are covered in a supply chain network. These are: (i) freight cost and service management, (ii) fleet management, (iii) load planning, (iv) routing and scheduling, and, (v) warehouse management (Poirier & Bauer, 2000). Within these logistics operations areas, warehouse management is the most important function for linking the supply chain partners to formulate the seamless integration of the whole supply chain and for ensuring the smooth flow of products inside the network (Gu, Goetschalckx, & McGinnis, 2007). With such an arrangement, it is essential to handle the warehouse resources, such as stock keeping units (SKUs), pallets and racks, pallet trucks and forklifts, and warehouse staff members, efficiently and effectively in order to have smooth manufacturing operations, to reduce inventory, lower processing, storage, and transshipment costs, and increase productivity within facilities (Vogt et al., 2005). Within the chain, currently, warehouse management systems (WMSs) are adopted to handle the warehouse resources and operations. However, these systems are lacking in real-time information sharing ability as the data collection technique is either manual-based or bar-code based. Therefore, WMSs are incapable of capturing real-time information or of visualizing the actual working status (Huang, Zhang, & Jiang, 2007). In addition, the positions of the resources are not located accurately by current data collection techniques (Shih, Hsieh, & Chen, 2006), resulting in inappropriate resource allocation to warehouse operations. Therefore, it is essential to implement real-time data management techniques for locating the resources accurately to support warehouse operations effectively.

2.2. Current real-time data management techniques for object location tracking

There are several real-time data management techniques adopted for facilitating information sharing in the existing market. Some of the techniques are also capable of providing object location information. In the outdoor environment, the most well known technology adopted in location tracking is the global position system (GPS). It is a space-based radio-navigation system that uses 24 satellites orbiting around the Earth and receivers to locate objects, in terms of

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height, longitude and latitude coordinates, on Earth (Posturing, Barrie, & Cotroneo, 2006). The main application of GPS is to determine the location of vehicles and the actual traffic condition. Although it locates an object accurately in the outdoor environment, it is unable to locate objects inside the buildings. Hence, Cell of origin (COO) or Cell-ID is proposed to locate objects between indoor and outdoor environment. COO is a network-based location system which uses the latitude and longitude coordinates of the base station and transmitters serving the mobile device as the location of the user (Jagoe, 2003). Nevertheless, it is inaccurate in locating a moving object as “blind points” always occur due to defective coverage of the network, especially in the indoor environment. Hence, various technologies have been developed to locate objects in the buildings. Infrared, ultrasonic and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies are the most common approaches for locating those objects (Xu & Gang, 2006). Among those three approaches, RFID technology is an emerging technology that has been widely adopted in different environments, such as manufacturing, warehousing, retailing, etc., for object identification. RFID uses a small tag containing an integrated circuit chip and an antenna, which has the ability to respond to radio waves transmitted from the RFID reader. It is able to send, process, and store information (Wu, Nystrom, Lin, & Yu, 2006). This technology has been widely adopted in different business operations to identify, locate and track people, animals or assets ([Huang et al., 2007], [Streitetal., 2003], [The vissen et al., 2006] and [Vijay Raman and Osyka, 2006]). Although it is much more expensive than bar-code technology, enterprises are willing to adopt such techniques so as to improve the accuracy of data capture (Morrison, 2005). By using the RFID technology, the feature of automated data capture is established. However, the mechanism that coordinates the resource management process of analyzing information, decision support, and knowledge sharing is still neglected. This highlights the need to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) techniques integrated with RFID technology to support the management of warehouse processes. In this research, the case-based reasoning (CBR) technique is adopted as this is one of the well-known AI techniques for the development of decision support systems.

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