Warehouse 4.0: Best Practices, Opportunities, and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

The 4th Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) for logistics management (Logistics 4.0) is based on the Internet-of-Things for the interconnection of technologies such as robots, artificial intelligence, intelligent sensors, and flexible production systems, as well as innovative computing practices such as big data analysis, cloud computing, and business intelligence. The objective of Logistics 4.0 is to operate autonomously the available resources for the daily tasks of the logistics system.

For example, Warehousing 4.0 includes automatic inventory replenishment, stand-alone inventory identification, order picking, and routing of systems. Interest in the introduction of cellular transport systems includes groups of autonomous vehicles that can "scan" their environment using laser scanners, infrared sensors, and RFID chips to navigate autonomously within storage spaces. Each of them has the ability to make autonomous decisions about their movements, route selection, and transit priorities by sharing data about their position and status with other vehicles. In the event of problems or variations, the team reacts by itself and resolves or treats them appropriately. This can also be extended by connecting the warehouse or distribution center to both of the points of sales, allowing the immediate identification of resupply and the appropriate scheduling of warehouse processes.

The digital revolution and Industry 4.0 play a vital role in supply chains. Companies that use Warehouse 4.0 solutions try to reduce their operating costs through more efficient inventory management and the available resources while increasing the level of provided services to the market. The considerable number of Warehouse 4.0 research and business initiatives prove that warehousing is continuously changing, bringing many opportunities and challenges. These aspects of Warehouse 4.0 are the main objective of this Special Issue.

Authors are cordially invited to submit original research papers, review articles, and empirical studies to Logistics for the 1 June 2020 issue. Manuscripts or papers can be submitted on the following topics:

• Warehouse 4.0 technologies (solutions) and their impact on logistics and supply chains;
• Best practices in Warehouse 4.0;
• Challenges and limitations of Warehouse 4.0 solutions;
• Smart and automated warehouses;
• Achieving the automation of warehousing processes with Warehouse 4.0 technologies;
• Achieving information (real-time) visibility with Warehouse 4.0 technologies;
• Optimizing resources and equipment used with Warehouse 4.0 technologies;
• Supporting interconnectivity with Warehouse 4.0 technologies.

Assoc. Prof. Dimitris Folinas
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Warehouse 4.0: best practices
• challenges and limitations
• smart and automated warehouses
• robots
• embedded systems
• drones
• Internet-of-Things
• intelligent sensors
• augmented reality
• real-time locating systems
• big data analysis