Smart warehouses: Rationale, challenges and solution directions

Smart warehouses aim to increase the overall service quality, productivity, and efficiency of the warehouse while minimizing costs and failures. In recent years, several studies have proposed and discussed different types of smart warehouses, identified key challenges, and proposed several solution directions for coping with these challenges. The objective of this article is to identify, evaluate, and synthesize the relevant studies discussing the design of smart warehouses and the transition to these new types of warehouses. We applied a systematic literature review (SLR) protocol to select primary studies. The SLR resulted in the identification of the domains in which smart warehouses are applied, key motivations for adopting smart warehouses, current distinctive characteristics of smart warehouses, currently adopted technologies for realizing smart warehouses, and challenges and strategies for transitioning to smart warehouses. To the best of our knowledge, no SLR paper has been published yet on smart warehouses, and therefore, this is timely research as organizations are nowadays transitioning to smart warehouses.