The UWB warehouse personnel positioning management system is an important component of intelligent warehousing and the foundation of Industry 4.0. With the rise of the internet economy and the rapid development of the logistics service industry, intelligent warehouse management and precise positioning play a crucial role in the entire management process of enterprises. If correct procurement, inventory control, and delivery cannot be guaranteed, it will lead to increased management costs, difficulty in ensuring service quality, and thus affect the competitiveness of enterprises.
Warehouse management is an important part of modern logistics management, which is the management of warehouses and the materials inside them. It is the planning, organization, control, and coordination process carried out by warehousing institutions to fully utilize their warehousing resources and provide efficient warehousing services. Specifically, warehouse management includes various management tasks and related operations such as the acquisition of warehouse resources, warehouse business management, warehouse process management, warehouse operation management, storage management, and safety management.
1.1 The Position and Role of Warehouse Management in Manufacturing Enterprises:
1) Can ensure the quality of money for the product entering the next stage;
2) Be able to prepare for the product to enter the market;
3) It is an important means to accelerate the circulation of goods and save circulation costs;
4) It is a necessary condition to ensure the smooth reproduction process of manufacturing enterprises.
The market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and improving production efficiency and reducing operating costs are crucial for enterprises. The application of warehouse management in various industries, designing and establishing a complete set of warehouse management processes, improving warehouse turnover, reducing the occupation of operating funds, is an important link in improving the efficiency of enterprise generation. The popular WMS system is based on the principle of static warehousing, and the introduction of the new UWB positioning technology has made the concept of elastic warehousing a reality, laying the foundation for the intensive operation of enterprises.
1.2 Analysis of UWB Storage System Requirements
In various industries, cargo warehousing management has always been a challenging issue for enterprises. In the face of the daily repetitive inbound and outbound work, warehouse management plays a crucial role in the entire supply chain of an enterprise. If the correct procurement and inventory control cannot be guaranteed, it will lead to an increase in management costs, difficulty in ensuring service quality, and thus affect the competitiveness of the enterprise. Traditional simple and static warehouse management can no longer guarantee efficient utilization of various resources. Nowadays, warehouse operations and inventory control operations have become very complex and diversified. Relying solely on manual memory and input is not only time-consuming and laborious, but also prone to errors, causing unnecessary losses to enterprises. At present, many warehouse management is mainly based on manual operations and semi automated computer management according to corresponding standards. Its shortcomings are obvious, that is, it requires a large amount of manpower to standardize the placement of items, find materials, regularly organize inventory, and register inbound and outbound inventory. This makes warehouse management problems very complicated, wastes a lot of time, and the production efficiency of enterprises cannot be fully utilized.
Our company has developed an integrated high-precision positioning platform for indoor and outdoor areas based on ultra wideband (UWB) technology, which can achieve real-time and accurate positioning of materials, personnel, and forklifts inside and outside the warehouse, obtaining real-time location information and historical trajectories. Thus, real-time high-precision intelligent supervision of personnel and equipment can be achieved, effectively managing warehouse processes and spaces, realizing batch management, rapid inbound and outbound, and dynamic inventory; Assist warehouse management personnel in comprehensively controlling and managing the inbound, outbound, mobile, inventory, and material searching operations of inventory items, effectively utilizing warehouse storage space, improving warehouse storage capacity, ultimately increasing warehouse storage space utilization, reducing inventory costs, and enhancing market competitiveness.
Introduction to UWB Storage System Solution
2.1 Overview of the Plan
Based on the strong technical strength in UWB positioning and combined with the current demand for warehouse logistics management systems at home and abroad, with the goal of achieving optimal collaboration in transportation, distribution, scheduling, and management, a warehouse logistics management system based on high-precision real-time positioning is launched.
In the warehouse logistics management system based on UWB indoor centimeter level real-time positioning system, real-time seamless and efficient positioning of goods, carts, and personnel inside and outside the warehouse area is achieved through broadband positioning technology. The positioning information is timely and accurately reflected to the warehouse control center (through wired or wireless means), and operators can achieve real-time monitoring, distribution, management, and intelligent scheduling of materials in the system interface.
2.2 Overall structure of the plan
Divided into three parts: system layer, application layer, and usage layer. The structure is shown in the following figure:

2.2.1 System Layer
It mainly includes two parts: WMS warehouse management system and location management system, which are responsible for different functions and provide overall warehousing services to end users.
2.2.2 Application Layer
Including database, positioning system, and scanning system for warehousing, it obtains cargo information from the WMS system and interacts with the positioning system to calculate the location of the cargo and insert it into the database.
2.2.3 Use Layer
Including the location tags used by users, scanning devices, specific goods, etc., are the elements that need to be located.
2.3 System workflow
The workflow of the warehouse logistics management system based on TD-LBS is to set up base stations in designated areas, configure positioning tags for carts, goods, and personnel that need to be located, and transmit real-time positioning data back to the backend service center through the positioning base station. The backend service center uses optimized high-precision positioning algorithms to calculate the accurate real-time position information and motion trajectory of equipment and personnel, and displays the position information on the ground in the demonstration area to achieve real-time high-precision positioning, ensuring that operators can achieve real-time monitoring, distribution, management, and intelligent scheduling of materials in the system interface.
2.4 System Function Introduction
The functions of the warehouse logistics management system based on TD-LBS indoor centimeter level real-time positioning mainly include: arrival inspection, warehousing, inventory, storage, outbound and archiving.
1. Delivery inspection upon arrival
After arrival, distinguish the status of materials, such as good goods, bad goods, samples, frozen materials, etc., and configure positioning tags for materials, personnel, and vehicles to obtain real-time location information and track the status of goods.
2. Warehouse management
Establish an interface between inventory management and ERP procurement and arrival plans, and strictly control the process from inventory to shelving. Enter the location tag information of the goods and the storage information of the materials into the database together, and the system specifies the storage location (warehouse position) of the goods according to established rules, achieving orderly storage of goods and accurate batch management.
Real time precise positioning: timed refresh, real-time acquisition of status information of goods, personnel, and carts, while ensuring the accuracy of status information;
Real time trajectory tracking: Using 2D/3D simulation of warehouse real-time information, real-time tracking of personnel movement or cargo flow trajectories is achieved, and different trajectory colors are used to distinguish different objects.
3. Dynamic inventory
Warehouse personnel can query inventory quantities through handheld devices, check whether the actual goods match the data in the database, confirm whether the goods are in the designated storage location, and automatically alert and report any abnormal information in real-time. Support dynamic inventory, the inventory process does not affect normal inbound and outbound operations, providing accurate dynamic inventory management for continuously operating warehouses.
PDA mobile query: You can hold a tablet phone to search in the warehouse, keep track of the logistics operation status and supervise important materials at any time, and achieve on-site management and office work;
Warehouse global display: It can obtain the global view of the entire warehouse, and people or items carrying positioning tags can be clearly displayed in the warehouse's vector map. It can also globally display and query the location of all targets within the area in the background electronic ground.
4. Storage of goods
Conduct statistics on the goods in the warehouse, so that the staff know the inventory information of the warehouse goods, grasp the circulation status of the materials, adjust the inventory in a timely manner, locate the positions of the materials and staff, facilitate real-time supervision, and promptly report abnormal information.
Responsibility supervision: Real time monitoring of the operational status of the areas under the responsibility of personnel in each position, effectively controlling the work integration of each link.
Material abnormality alarm: Real time monitoring of the operation status of logistics in the warehouse, automatic alarm for illegal operations and abnormal situations, facilitating timely response and minimizing costs;
Historical data playback: The location server can store historical location data for several months, and can revisit and query the dynamic situation of people, vehicles, and objects at key time nodes;
Safety guidance: prevent damage, ensure the safety of staff, automatically detect collisions, and reduce damage to goods and infrastructure.
5. Outbound management
Quickly obtain the storage location of materials according to the outbound plan, register the inventory of materials outbound, update data in real time, scientifically allocate personnel and vehicles, shorten the transportation time of materials, and improve work efficiency.
Reasonable allocation: By obtaining accurate location information, nearby personnel and trucks can be reasonably mobilized to accelerate the speed of cargo transfer;
Route optimization: Based on the information of the loading and unloading points of the assigned tasks and the current location of oneself, perform path optimization calculations to improve efficiency;
Efficient task allocation: Based on warehouse operation requirements, arrange personnel work plans, track and record plan execution, and improve warehouse operation efficiency.
Security zone alarm: The backend can divide the positioning area into different levels and types of zones, such as security zone electronic fences, alarm zones, and restricted zone electronic fences. Once the target enters, the corresponding level of alarm will be triggered.
6. Material archiving
Real time updates of the location status information of materials/personnel/equipment, archiving of data materials, integration and analysis of big data, generation of cargo status reports, tracking of daily progress, timely detection of problems, and secondary development according to requirements.
Dynamic update report: Real time tracking of the inbound and outbound status of goods, dynamically updating the goods report to facilitate timely planning of the next steps;
Warehouse planning: Classify and analyze historical data, provide suggestions for warehouse area planning, classify reasonably based on business data, add optimization strategies in the shelving and picking process, and improve the physical layout of the warehouse;
Bottleneck exploration: Conduct research and analysis on the current inventory flow status, and explore solutions;
Strategy optimization: Set multiple shelving and picking strategies according to different business types' requirements;
Storage big data analysis: comprehensive analysis of goods distribution, asset inflow and outflow statistics, product category location analysis, etc.
Overview: Based on UWBPersonnel positioning systemThe technological warehousing and logistics system can greatly enhance the efficiency of warehousing and improve the management level of warehousing.