SCMG501 Week 2 Discussion

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American Public University *

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501

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Industrial Engineering

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Jan 9, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by BarristerTapirPerson186

Good evening fellow classmates and professor, The incorporation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in supply chain management will drastically impact business operations. Overall, the use of UAVs or “Drones,” will contribute to cost reductions, create efficiencies, and increase response time speeds in deliveries to even the most unreachable areas of the world. This type of technology also comes with its own set of complexities that can impact scalability, hamper security, and possibly require more time for training staff and employees on how to deploy and operate UAVs. Drones can be implemented in the different areas of supply chain management. Recently, there has been an increase in utilizing drones indoors for warehouse operations. The main areas drones have been used for warehouse operations are inventory management, indoor intra-logistics, and for surveillance and inspection purposes, (Wawrla, 2019). The greatest potential for the use of drones have primary been towards the inventory management aspect of warehouse operations. The potential for drones being used outside has primarily focuses on the delivery of goods. It seems to this date that the limitations of drone use for aerial delivery is based on the weight of what is being delivered, and most items lean towards being smaller overall. For example, the company Zipline that is based out of Africa delivers small units of blood to hospitals and medical facilities that are withing 20-30 minutes of their distribution centers, (Zipline,2022). Additionally, Amazon has been testing their UAV technology towards their Amazon Air service that will provide same day deliver in 30 minutes or less, where they started with two customers and will expand to dozens of customers nationwide, (Staff, 2022). Other companies such as Google, Walmart, and UPS are investing in drone delivery projects as well.

Outdoor drone delivery service will be able to deliver parcels, mail, medicines, food, take site surveys, and participate in humanitarian and environmental projects as well. In addition to UAVs, there are also unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) that include the equipment, network, and personnel to control an unmanned aircraft. Remotely piloted Aircraft (RPA) is unmanned vehicle controlled by a human source to be flown in the air, where a remote piloted aircraft system (RPAS) is a digital system without a human entity controlling a UAV (Cares and Dickman, 2016). Unlike the flexibility of controlling UAVs from the air or ground, when it is specifically controlled from the ground it is then called a remotely piloted vehicle (RPV), (ScienceDirect, 2015). These are just a few of the various types of UAV definitions commonly referenced in literature. References Applications of drones in warehouse operations - ETH Z . Wawrla. L (2019). Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mtec/pom-dam/documents/Drones%20in %20warehouse%20opeations_POM%20whitepaper%202019_Final.pdf Cares, J. R., & Dickmann, J. Q. J. (Eds.). (2016). Operations research for unmanned systems . John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Staff, A. (2022, June 13). Amazon prime air prepares for drone deliveries . US About Amazon. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from

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