Drone-based warehouse inventory management of perishables

Warehouse inventory management is a complex process. When inventory includes perishables, the complexity of these processes is compounded with additional requirements such as appropriate ambient storage conditions and placement of one type of perishables (e.g., bananas) far away from another type of perishables (e.g., strawberries). With perishables spending a significant amount of time post-harvest in warehouses, appropriate management of warehouse inventory is necessary to reduce wastage due to spoilage. Drone-based warehouse inventory management is gaining popularity as seen in the increasing number of firms in this space as well as the number of research publications. RFID tags have been widely used for inventory management for more than two decades. While drones have been successfully used in warehouses with non-perishables, RFID and drone use in warehouses with perishables has not witnessed its fair share as evidenced by the lack of publications in this general area. This paper is a step in the direction to address this void in published literature. We consider object-level RFID tags and drones to automate warehouse inventory management of perishables. Results from our analytical model and simulation analysis indicate that such warehouse automation is beneficial to both the warehouse operators and their customers.