A cyber-physical view of automated warehouse systems

Automated warehouse systems play a key role in manufacturing systems and are usually controlled using hierarchical and centralized control architectures and conventional automation programming techniques. Cyber-physical systems are driving a significative revolution in manufacturing systems. In our opinion, they are suitable to be adopted in many transportation and material handling systems, in particular automated warehouse systems. In this paper, we present from a cyber-physical perspective a model oriented to the analysis, control and performance evaluation of decentralized warehouse control systems.