Form and Essence of Warehousing Intelligence and Robotization

Peng Yang
Tsinghua University, China
 

Abstract:

Warehousing systems are undergoing a transformative shift toward intelligence and robotization, driven by the explosive growth of e-commerce and the increasing demand for high-quality order fulfillment. This seminar explores both the form of warehousing intelligence and robotization—innovative systems and smart methods—and their essence: the goals they aim to achieve. It covers the evolution from picker-to-parts to parts-to-picker systems, highlighting innovations in tote-handling technologies. Furthermore, it presents several smart operational methods, including flow picking, reservation-aware online order batching, reshuffle-aware storage assignment, and learn-based scheduling of orders, totes, and robots. Finally, it aligns these technical advances with emerging policy and industrial imperatives, discussing the vision that warehousing intelligence and robotization are meant to realize.

Peng Yang is currently an associate professor in the Institution of Data and Information, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University. He obtained his PhD from the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tsinghua University. His research interests include Robotic Warehousing Systems, AI Technologies in Warehousing and Logistics, Sustainable Warehousing and Logistics, and Dynamic Order Picking Technologies. He has published extensively in leading journals such as Transportation Science, IISE Transactions, TRE, IJPR, etc. He serves as an executive director of the China Society of Logistics, an area editor for Computers & Industrial Engineering, and a member of IFAC TC 5.2. His online course, Modelling and Analysis on Warehousing Systems, has been adopted by more than 20 universities. He has received several awards, including the 2021 Tsinghua University Excellent Young Teacher Award (one of ten university-wide each year) and the 2024 Science and Technology Innovation Youth Award from the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing.

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