MATEC Web of Conferences 232, 03051 (2018) https://doi.org/10.

1051/matecconf/201823203051
EITCE 2018

Development of Automated Warehouse Management System

Deng Mingxing1, Mao Jian1, Gan Xingwen1
1School of mechanical and automotive engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai201620, China

Abstract. With the rapid development of the logistics industry, high-speed, high-efficiency and accurate
delivery have become the new pursuit goals of the logistics industry, and intelligent logistics has been
favored by enterprises. Aiming at the current situation that the offline products must be manually moved,
sorted and discharged, the scheme of fully automated three-dimensional warehouse is proposed. Through
the design of the whole three-dimensional warehouse, the whole process of the offline products can be
realized by AGV, AGV management system, warehouse management system and roller. Lines, palletizers,
etc. are completed. As the core part of the whole solution, the warehouse management system plays a vital
role in achieving point-to-point tracking of offline products, and can perform regular statistical analysis on
the inbound and outbound products to achieve digital management, improve the competitiveness of
enterprises and bring considerable economic benefits.

distribution of goods entering and leaving the warehouse

and track in real time. The warehouse status of the
1 INTRODUCTION warehouse is also updated in real time as the goods enter
With the promotion of national strategic favorable and exit, realizing the automatic entry and exit of the
policies such as “Internet +” and “Made in China 2025” goods and the record library. In addition, the WMS
and the increasing demand for informationization, warehouse management system can provide warehouse
efficient production and intensive warehousing and managers with a visual location display, which allows
distribution, the automated warehousing system has been warehouse managers to easily understand the location
used more and more widely. Its fields of research are also information and manage the warehouse accordingly.
expanding. [1] In recent years, China's express delivery In view of the many disadvantages of the current
industry has mushroomed, and more and more exports to offline product storage methods, the automated
foreign countries have greatly boosted China's economic three-dimensional warehouse can solve these problems
growth. As a result, we are also facing new challenges. well, and finally achieve high efficiency, high quality
In order to meet customers' requirements for product and digital management of the products.
supply efficiency and packaging, as a traditional way,
artificial palletizing and film can not meet the actual 2 Demand and site layout
needs, and can not keep up with the pace of the times.
The new technology is applied to realize automatic
management of products. In recent years, automated 2.1 Demand Analysis
three-dimensional warehouse has become the first choice
In order to reduce personnel, improve the efficiency of
of major enterprises. This solution is adopted to improve
goods outbound, and realize digital management, the
the management efficiency of enterprise warehouses,
company proposes an automated warehouse. It generally
realize unmanned warehouses, and save a lot of money,
includes the following steps: 1. The offline product is
which make the enterprise more competitive and vital in
sent to the storage drum line through the latent AGV; 2.
the market.
The product is sealed and unsealed through the roller line,
The automated three-dimensional warehouse can also
and then flows into the corresponding crossing; 3. The
be called an unmanned warehouse. The whole process is
fork type AGV will send the crossing goods to the
carried out by the AGV or the stacker to carry out the
corresponding location allocated by WMS; 4, WMS
inbound and outbound operations, which can reduce the
allocates the outbound task and delivers it to the fork
cost of many traditional manual handling of goods.
type AGV, and the fork type AGV sends the product to
Automated warehouses have the characteristics of high
the exit crossing; 5. The products flowing out of the
degree of automation, energy saving, safety, intensive
drum line are palletized, covered, and then wrapped
storage, high efficiency, and unattended [1]. As the core
around the film and cable tie.
component of the automated warehouse, the WMS
According to the actual research, the daily net storage
warehouse management system can optimize the
of the three-dimensional warehouse is about 2,000 cases.

© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
MATEC Web of Conferences 232, 03051 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201823203051
EITCE 2018

The goods entering the warehouse need to pass the automatic control system, and information management
quality inspection (OQC, Outgoing Quality Control), and system (WMS). [2]
the qualified products can be assigned to the warehouse
for palletizing. As the core part of the automated
2.2.1 Overall layout of the site
warehouse, WMS plays the role of data collection, data
statistics, location allocation and information The overall layout of the site consists of: the storage
transmission. roller line, the three-dimensional warehouse, the
outbound roller line, the palletizing machine, the film
2.2 Site layout wrapping machine, and the board warehouse machine.
The overall layout is shown in Figure 1.
The automated warehouse is mainly composed of six
parts: shelves, containerized unit, conveyor system,

Figure 1. Overall layout

by the three-dimensional warehouse is 2,400, divided
2.2.2 Warehouse overall layout and location division into 24 areas, which are A~X. The specific layout is
shown in Figure 2.
According to the actual demand and on-site venue
restrictions, the final number of warehouses determined

Figure 2. Top view of the warehouse layout

There are two types of shelf types: Class I includes Class A locations are distributed in the 1-4 layers of
A~L library area, a total of twelve, each library area has the class I library area, with a total of 1056 locations;
110 locations; Class II includes M~X library areas, a Class A1 locations are distributed in the 5th layer of
total of twelve, each of which has 90 locations. the class I library area, with a total of 264 locations;
According to the width of the location and the Class B locations are distributed in the 1-4 layers of
maximum height of the product, the location categories the class II library area, with a total of 864 locations;
are divided into four categories: A, B, A1, and B1.

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MATEC Web of Conferences 232, 03051 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201823203051
EITCE 2018

Class B1 locations are distributed in the 5 layer of the The specific division of the warehouse location
class II library area, with a total of 216 locations. categories is shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4.

Figure 3. Class I Library Area Location Classification

Figure 4. Class II Library Area Location Classification

Description: Among them, yellow is the class A established on a dedicated network. In a small-scale
location, grey is the A1 location, green is the B location, network environment, LANs provide connection and data
and red is the B1 location. exchange services through dedicated servers. C/S
generally targets a relatively fixed user base and has
strong control over information security. Generally, the
3.1 System network architecture and
highly confidential information system adopts the C/S
communication content
structure. [4] The field conditions and requirements are
basically consistent with the C/S characteristics, so the
3.1.1 WMS system network architecture WMS adopts the C/S network architecture.
According to the overall plan design of the
Client-server model Also known as the client-server three-dimensional warehouse, the network framework is
architecture, C/S architecture, is a network architecture built to realize data interaction, and then the normal
that takes the client (usually a graphical user) The operation of the three-dimensional warehouse is realized.
interface program is distinguished from the server. Each The network architecture diagram is shown in Figure 5.
instance of the client software can make a request to a
server or application server. [3] C/S is generally

Figure 5. Network architecture diagram

The modules that communicate with WMS are: 1. WCS;
2. PLC; 3. fork-type AGVS; 4. palletizer 5. database. The
3.1.2 Communication between WMS and each
communication methods and functions of WMS and each
module
module are as follows.

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MATEC Web of Conferences 232, 03051 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201823203051
EITCE 2018

WMS communicates with WCS. WCS serves as the WMS is written in C#. The C# programming language is
data center and provides all the detailed information of a language developed specifically for .NET applications
the offline products. After the WMS obtains the data, it is and is a perfect combination with the .NET framework. It
used for product location allocation and detailed record differs from some previous programming languages
recording. when designing and developing program interfaces. It
WMS communicates with PLC. PLC obtains scan not only has the characteristics of rapid development of
code information and provides it to WMS, WMS Visual Basic, but also has the powerful functions of C++
feedback message to roller line language. [5]
The WMS communicates with the fork AGVS. The WMS is divided into 8 modules, mainly including
WMS sends the task to the AGVS. The AGV performs task status, model management, warehouse management,
the task and feedbacks the current status of the task in communication, and business reports.
real time. The task status is used to display the progress of the
The WMS communicates with the palletizer. The execution of the currently executing task.
WMS sends the palletizing information to the palletizer, Model management is mainly used to maintain
and the palletizer performs the correct action. detailed information on the warehousing model.
WMS communicates with the database, and all Warehouse management mainly displays and stores
product data in the warehouse is stored in the database. the products in the library.
WMS can be used to change the contents of the database. The communication is mainly used to communicate
with each module to realize the correct execution of the
WMS function.
3.2 WMS Main Function
The business report is used to perform system
statistics on the inbound and outbound product tasks.
Figure 6-8 shows some of the interfaces of WMS:

Figure 6. Login window

Figure 7. Image Class View Location Status Interface

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MATEC Web of Conferences 232, 03051 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201823203051
EITCE 2018

Figure 8. Communication with the master control PLC Interface

4 Experiment analysis 5 Conclusion

Experimental site test process: As the core of the whole automated warehouse, WMS
Inbound section: warehouse management system plays a vital role. As a
1. The inbound product flows in through the roller bridge connecting software and hardware, the WMS
line, and the read information is sent to the WMS warehouse management system realizes the automated
through the first scanner, and the WMS correctly decodes storage of off-line products and meets the needs of
and sends the sealing information to the roller line enterprises for unmanned warehouses and high efficiency.
console to realize the process of “sealing the product”; The pursuit of data management has brought
2. After the product passes through the second competitiveness and vitality to the enterprise, and has
scanner, the read information is sent to the WMS, and the created enormous economic value.
WMS analyzes which type of the product is based on the This set of automated three-dimensional warehouse
read information, assigns a corresponding location to solution is different from the previous automated storage
generate an AGV inbound task, and At the same time, solution. The market is mostly a combination of stacking
feedback to the roller line console crossing information, and loading trolleys. This solution is aimed at the
the roller line correctly transports the dispensed product existing on-site environment of the enterprise and
to the corresponding storage crossing; realizes the automation of the product in the case of
3. When the product arrives at the designated inbound minimum on-site transformation. Warehouse
crossing, the WMS will deliver the inbound task to the management reduces the cost of renovation for the
AGV system, and the AGV will transfer the product to company. The WMS system has a large research space in
the designated location of the task. the location allocation. When the location allocation is
Outbound section: further optimized, the speed of the inbound and outbound
1. WMS delivers the outbound task to the AGV storage will be further improved. Of course, the AGV
system according to the quality status and quantity of the walking path needs to be further optimized to realize the
library model, and sends the palletizing information, card location allocation and path. The close coordination of
information, and film information to the palletizer, Card the plan, otherwise there will be many contradictions.
board machine, film machine, to achieve synchronous When better optimization is achieved, the warehousing
operation. efficiency will be greatly improved and the service life of
2. When the outbound product arrives at the roller the warehouse shelves will be improved, which is the
line, it needs to go through the scanner. The scanner direction that can be further studied in the future.
scans the read information back to the WMS system. The
WMS confirms whether it is the current product, and the
normal outflow is palletizing. If it is not abnormal, it will References
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MATEC Web of Conferences 232, 03051 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/201823203051
EITCE 2018

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