Warehousing and Material Handling Systems for the Digital Industry: The New Challenges for the Digital Circular Economy

This book illustrates innovative support-decision models, methods, and advanced automation and robotic technologies aimed at enhancing the overall performance of Warehousing and Material Handling (WMH) in terms of time and space efficiency, service levels, labor safety, and ergonomics. It provides a collection of cutting-edge issues commonly faced in warehousing systems worldwide, along with a structured set of methodologies and technological solutions to address them.

Warehousing and Material Handling (WMH) are pivotal processes within supply chain and production systems. They involve the handling, consolidation, and storage of goods such as raw materials, parts, components, and finished products within distribution centers. WMH is also a key component of distribution networks, serving as a hierarchy of facilities dedicated to receiving materials from vendors and shipping to customers while meeting service level and performance targets.

The book offers readers the opportunity to explore this topic from multiple knowledge levels and perspectives. At the basic level, it introduces readers to the problems, issues, nomenclature, fundamental models, and methods to support the decision-making process. At an intermediate level, it delves into the state-of-the-art on critical issues in warehousing and material handling systems. Finally, at an advanced level, it delves into the most challenging and recent research and industry issues, addressing both providers and users of WMH solutions and technologies.

The book’s intended audience includes undergraduate students, graduate students, PhD students, post-doc researchers, scholars, and researchers from academia and industry. It is also relevant for practitioners and managers working in production, logistics, and supply chain environments. The authors’ approach is multidisciplinary, with a special focus on logistics, automation, optimization, safety, ergonomics, and the overall sustainability of WMH systems and operations.

Riccardo Manzini is a full professor of Logistics, Material Handling, and Facility Planning at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Italy. He is the director of the ＂Warehousing Center at UniBO＂, which deals with all critical issues affecting the handling and storage of materials. He is a member of the core faculty of the international Bologna Business School - BBS at the Alma Mater Studiorum, teaching in some Executive Master and MBA programs.

He works in industrial plants, logistics, maintenance, packaging, and agro-food. His research interests include material handling, storage and warehousing systems, supply chain optimization, digital twin and expert systems for logistics and operations, maintenance and reliability engineering, and food supply chain.

He has coordinated several industrial research and technology transfer projects for private and public companies in the manufacturing sector, automation and robotics industry, packaging machinery industry, 3PL and 4PL, agro-food sector, etc.

He is the author of more than 200 research manuscripts on the design, management, control, and optimization of production systems, emphasizing the development and application of models and methods to support the optimization of the decision-making process. He is the author of some international books, including for Springer ＂Warehousing in the Global Supply Chain＂ and ＂Maintenance for Industrial Systems＂.

Riccardo Accorsi is Associate Professor of Sustainable Operations and Logistics and Production Management and Optimization at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna in the Department of Industrial Engineering. His research falls within the broad field of operations management and industrial logistic systems through the design and development of tailored Decision-Support Systems (DSS) and digital twins, optimization, simulation, machine learning techniques. His main research interests concern warehousing, material handling and packaging systems and sustainable food supply chain networks. He is recipient of the 2018 Sustainability Young Investigator Award, and Principal Investigator and WP leader of funded National (PRIN - NEXTCART) and European (Horizon - R3PACK) Projects, respectively.

He has a ten-years’ experience in consulting for numerous industrial applied research projects in 3PL, food, automotive, machinery, manufacturing, and packaging industries. He is author of more than 100 indexed publications and co-editor of two international books on Food Supply Chain design, planning and control.