A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Master of Science in Embedded and Mobile Systems of the Nelson Mandela African Institutions of Science and Technology
In the supply chain and logistics industry, the precision of the data assets inventory plays a
crucial role in warehouse activities. The operations like storage locations arrangement,
inventory management, and maintaining the flow of incoming and outcoming goods lead to
the success of the warehouse. Nowadays, most people prefer online shopping all over the world
because it is faster than local trade. Thus, there's massive information in the supply chain and
logistics sector to explore in order to improve operations of the warehouse such as receiving,
ordering, shipping, storage assignment to facilitate the automation in the warehouse. As result,
this research is proposed to improve warehouse activities. The RFID-based warehouse
management system automates storage and inventory management without any human
intervention. In order to accomplish the objectives of the study, a software program was
developed with sets of rules, and an algorithm to optimize the inventory operations with the
help of RFID technology. The predefined rules help in giving priorities to some of the selected
products to store and retrieve in the indicated location. The long-range RFID reader is used in
this project. The reader is attached to the entrance of the gate of the warehouse to facilitate the
reading of incoming goods. Once the goods arrive in the warehouse, the storage location
function will assign to each one the storage location and update status in the database. A
handheld reader attached to the forklift facilitates inventory management and communicates
with the application via a wireless network and finally store data in the database for future use.
After developing this system, a test was conducted for testing the feasibility and applicability
of the system. The output showed that the inventory management operation was made strides,
and the correctness of inventory location increased from 72.8% to 99%. The cycle time
moreover decreases from 60 minutes to 20 minutes which is down to 28.79%.