Title: Study on vehicle management in logistics based on RFID, GPS and GIS

Authors: Yizhong Wang, Oscar K.W. Ho, George Q. Huang, Da Li

Addresses: School of Electronic Information and Automation, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, 300222, PR China. ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, PR China. ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong SAR, PR China. ' School of Electronic Information and Automation, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, 300222, PR China

Abstract: In this paper, a real-time vehicle management system was proposed to plan and schedule vehicles| optimum routings using real-time information in logistics or distribution services. Three technologies were adopted for monitoring real-time situation and providing visualised interface, including Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Geographical Information System (GIS), and Global Positioning System (GPS). A real-time vehicle routing planner with time windows model and an insertion heuristic method were used to formulate vehicles| scheduling and search the relative optimal solution, respectively. The system was implemented by means of Visual Basic .Net and Visual Earth. Numerical experiments were conducted with good results to show the feasibility of the system.

Keywords: RFID; radio frequency identification; real-time vehicle routing; logistics; GIS; geographical information systems; GPS; global positioning systems; vehicle management; routing planning; vehicle scheduling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMS.2008.021200

International Journal of Internet Manufacturing and Services, 2008 Vol.1 No.3, pp.294 - 304

Published online: 09 Nov 2008 *

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