# Real-Time Location-Positioning Technologies for Managing Cart Operations at a Distribution Facility
## 2 Literature Review
[39] presented a case study that used an RFID infrastructure to trace airplane repairable items in an aircraft engineering company in Hong Kong. Their study also suggested critical success factors for companies to adopt RFID technologies for their businesses (e.g., strong internal and external motivation for improvement, desire to keep abreast of the latest technology, avoiding major process changes and RFID skills and knowledge transfer) and summarized the lessons learned from their study (e.g., identification of the advantages and return on investment, securing top management support, performing a small-scale proof-of-concept testing and using standard hardware and software). Most case studies are relevant to warehousing operations. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [40] presented a case from Volvo that made use of mobile RFID, cellular networks and web technologies for managing products in a supply chain and evaluated the application regarding its operational reliability, usability and productivity. They also demonstrated the productivity gain in lead-time due to the adoption of the solution. [PERSON] et al. [41] proposed an RFID-based system for handling the sequences of performing daily warehousing tasks. Their system was piloted at GENCO. In a later work, [PERSON] et al. [42] developed an RFID-enabled logistics process knowledge-based system, which can automatically identifies current process status and provide knowledge support to staff members, and demonstrated the application with a case study in Eastern Worldwide Company Limited. [PERSON] et al. [43] piloted an RFID case-based system for aiding decisions of order picking at Group Sense Limited. Their system had the capability of identifying the locations of the resources and recommending the shortest pick-up route. [PERSON] et al. [44] developed an RFID-baseddigital warehouse management system, which supports real-time inventory management and automatic storage and retrieval assignment. [PERSON] et al. [45] proposed a real-time warehouse operation planning system, which adopts a set of RFID equipment to collect information about resources and demand orders, to support order pickup and delivery operations. [PERSON] et al. [46] presented a case study of a Canadian third-party logistics supply chain, which adopted RFID technologies for truck tracking and warehouse operations. The integration of the RFID infrastructure with the existing ERP and WMS enabled the real-time verification of shipments and hence reduced shipment mismatches. It also enhanced the efficiency of the picking and shipping processes. For a comprehensive review of the literature on RFID in warehousing, we refer the reader to the work of [PERSON] et al. [47]. Our application is different from the existing research on the traditional use of RFID for warehouse operations because: (i) in those applications, the items considered are usually static so that real-time locating systems provide less value to them; and (ii) carts can be staged at any unoccupied space in the facility. Furthermore, in addition to the capability of locating objects in real time, we analyze the tremendous offline historical data about cart movements collected from our RFID-based system for studying operational issues in this large facility.