Smart logistics based on the internet of things technology: an overview

Smart logistics is an effective way to meet the challenges of fast-changing customer expectations, take opportunities brought by new technologies, and facilitate new business models. This review paper systematically summarises the recent research and applications of smart logistics based on the internet of things (IoT), including smart freight transportation, warehousing, and delivery. A bibliometric analysis based on publications between 2008 and 2019 reveals main technologies and impacts of the research and applications of IoT-based smart logistics and their industrial and geographic distributions. The content analysis demonstrates the role and impact of IoT on smart logistics, reveals challenges of IoT-based smart logistics, and provides research needs for the development of smart logistics. The current challenges include technical problems of radio frequency identification and wireless sensor networks, limited extension and technical capacity of IoT,standardisation issues of IoT, data acquisition and processing issues of IoT, and security and privacy concerns on IoT. There is a strong research need to address the key technical issues of IoT, promote various IoT technologies in logistics practice, and jointly develop advanced information and communications technologies and management systems.