The term “ Lea n Produ ction ” was first introduced in th e
book “ The machine that changed the World ” in 1990. Since
then, many enter prises applied lean production to improve
the p roductivity a nd competitiveness against the g lobal
co mpet iti o n and ec ono my d ecli n e ove r th e p ast dec ade s.
Derived from Toyota Product ion System, lean production
enable s product ion system and war ehouse to inte grate dif-ferent tools to e liminate was te and creat e value, leadi ng to
the imp rovement in quality and the reduction of cost, lead
time, inventory, and equipment downtim e.
Rad iofrequency identific ation (R FID) uses radio wave s
to exchange data between a reader and elect ronic tags at-tached on objects. The data on the tags can be read and
wri tten to f acil itat e the ide ntif ica tion a nd track ing of th e
object s. Promo ted by the U.S. Depa rtment of Defense and
the world ’s largest retailer Wal-Mart, RFID has becom e an
effective way to track the goods throu ghout the suppl y chain
and one of the most promisi ng new technologi es influenci ng
the operations in product ion, war ehousing , and distrib ution
secto rs in recent years.
The distrib ution center under this study stor es more than
ten milli on parts belong ing to about 10,000 types stor ed in
ten warehouses . There are more than 10,000 storage and
retrieval operat ions for hundred s of part types on a daily
basis. Due to the increa se in volum e and varie ty of stor age
a nd re tr ie va l de ma n ds , a war e ho us e m an a ge me n t sy ste m
(WMS) with bett er effectiveness and efficiency is requi red.
Therefor e, both lean manag ement and RFI D are adopte d in
the operat ion imp rovem ent. Thi s study presen ts the applica-tion of lean manag ement and RFI D to imp rove the logi stics
efficiency in the distrib ution center.