# Smart Warehouse Management System: Architecture, Real-Time Implementation and Prototype Design
###### Abstract
The IIoT is still an emerging concept that needs to be developed. However, much research and many surveys are being conducted to comprehend the scope of this area and overcome the challenges it is facing [14; 15; 16; 17]. To design efficient IoT-based architectures, the correct blending of the software and hardware modules of the system is necessary. IoT-based smart warehouses enable the transition to Industry 4.0 by catering to the challenges related to data collection, human and robot activity, and robust localization [18]. The architecture of a smart warehouse must be able to maintain a smooth workflow [19]. Several algorithms have been designed for smart management systems based on the IoT that are used for tasks such as product placement and product retrieving by visualizing and relating data in terms of space, position, and volumes [20]. Task optimization plays a vital role in a smart warehouse system [21]. From picking goods to arranging them on the shelves and pallets, all the tasks have to be optimized in a way that constructively improves the flow of the supply chain. Techniques such as adaptive task planning and path planning algorithms have been put into practice in order to manage large autonomous systems with limited resources [22]. Although there have been previous works in the domain of warehouse automation and inventory management systems [11; 15; 19], nonetheless, there is always room for improvement. The past research has mostly addressed partial automation on one or more sections of an inventory. There is also little to no research on the implementation of a complete architecture of a warehouse automation system, conforming to the modern standards of the Industrial IoT and providing practicality, feasibility, and efficiency. We address these issues and research gaps in this important domain, and the contributions of this work are mentioned below:  
* We propose an architecture to automate the Warehouse Management Systems in smart warehouses for Industry 4.0 technology adoption. A domain-driven approach was used to propose the architecture, which models the system using architecture viewpoints to cater to the needs of various stakeholders;
* The real-time implementation of the proposed model was achieved by designing prototypes according to the models for various sections and nodes in the architecture;
* A thorough description of the IoT-based system prototype design is presented, which can be customized according to the needs of any warehouse and inventory management system;
* A case study of a textile factory is discussed in which the proposed model was deployed for validation testing;
* Lastly, the customized hardware design and IoT-based implementation according to our proposed architecture were found to improve the latency and overall efficiency of the system. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the background of this work, while Section 3 describes a review of the literature. Section 4 presents our methodology and the proposed architecture. In Section 5, we present a case study based on the proposed architecture. Further, the prototype design and deployment are presented in Section 6. The staggered transition is discussed in Section 7. Results and a comparison are given in Section 8, and finally, the conclusions are presented in Section 9.