Can intelligent storage system really make express delivery faster?
With the development of e-commerce and logistics industry, express delivery has become an indispensable role in life. Domestic express business volume has maintained a rapid growth of about 50% for five consecutive years. However, with the decline of population dividend and the rising of employment cost, the traditional logistics system is seeking reform and the advantages of intelligent storage are prominent.
In August 2016, the first fully automated warehouse of rookie alliance officially opened in Zengcheng, Guangzhou, realizing a new breakthrough in China's warehousing intelligence. After the consumer places an order on the e-commerce platform, the order information is immediately obtained in the warehouse and a barcode is formed. The barcode is pasted on the express box, and the box begins to enter the automatic track.
Next, under the guidance of automation, the express box selects goods by itself. In this way, labor only needs to be put into barcode review, sorter monitoring and other links. The seven links of goods transportation, storage, loading and unloading, and transportation can be integrated, with the efficiency of at least 30% improved and the picking accuracy of almost 100%.
Intelligent and unmanned storage will be the trend. For logistics enterprises and retail circulation enterprises, how to build an exclusive intelligent storage system?
Macro environment in the new logistics era
The emergence of the new era can not be separated from the macro environment, so what are the macro environment factors driving the development of the new logistics era?
Over the past 10 years, the rapid development of e-commerce in China has accelerated the rise of intelligent storage. According to the annual growth rate of nearly 30% for e-commerce warehousing, the high growth rate presents new challenges to the warehousing industry's software and hardware; the improvement of customers' requirements for service quality promotes the upgrading of warehousing software and hardware
Driven by the reform of the state supply side, 4 of the industry and 2025 of China's manufacturing, the concept of "Internet +" storage 4 has been spawned. It has provided a high degree of convergence for the network and intelligent storage hardware, and has pointed out the direction for the development of intelligent warehousing.
The national "one belt and one way" strategy promotes the strategic thinking of enterprises. At present, domestic logistics enterprises not only need to think about the current situation, but also need to combine the strategic opportunities of the whole country to make the warehousing enterprises begin to think about the development strategy of the enterprises, and to build up a brand new strategy for advancing the domestic market to the outside world. This is a very important strategy. Can be quickly surpassed.
Characteristics of intelligent storage in the new logistics era
Four new features in the field of intelligent storage:
1. Wide application of automation and intelligence
It mainly refers to the application of hardware, such as automated three-dimensional warehouse system, automatic sorting equipment, sorting robot and wearable equipment, such as VR augmented reality technology; it is subdivided into three-dimensional storage system, shuttle, etc. in the automated three-dimensional warehouse, the sorting robot mainly includes the application of joint robot, manipulator, spider hand.
2. Internet + intelligent storage equipment
This part focuses on software, mainly Internet technology such as big data, cloud computing, AI, deep learning, Internet of things, machine vision and other extensive applications. Using these data and technology to sell and forecast goods, as well as the allocations of intelligent inventory and the exploration of personal consumption habits, can achieve accurate sales promotion according to personal consumption habits.
3. sharing
The emergence of sharing economy is reflected in the storage field, such as the sharing of storage logistics equipment such as pallets, containers, forklifts, etc.
4. overseas
With the strategy of "one country and one belt" and the upgrading of domestic consumption, new opportunities for development in the field of cross-border import and export are coming. There is a surge in demand for cross-border overseas warehouses.
Intelligent storage equipment
The building of intelligent storage system is inseparable from the organic integration of efficient and advanced software and hardware. Here is a summary of the hardware facilities and equipment of the intelligent warehouse:
1. Automatic transportation system
Mainly including belt conveyor line, roller conveyor line and tray conveyor line, mainly used for the transport of cartons and turnover boxes.
2. Automatic storage system
It includes two parts: automated warehouse and automated dense storage system. The necessary equipment of the automatic three-dimensional warehouse includes:
Stacker: pallet stacker (used in pallet warehouse), box stacker. There are tray conveying systems in the three-dimensional warehouse, such as multi-layer shuttles (shuttles, parent-child vehicles, etc.).
Automatic dense storage system, mainly used for the storage of boxes.
3. Automatic sorting system
At present, automatic sorting system is popular, especially in express delivery industry and e-commerce warehouse.
Cross belt sorting system and tilt tray sorting system: mainly used for box sorting and single piece zero picking.
Slide sorting system: mainly for sorting of boxes. There are left and right separable devices installed between the belt conveyor line and the roller line (referred to as the cycloid sorting system); cycloid sorting system: mainly for the box sorting.
4. Robot sorting system
Robot sorting system is mainly used to realize the sorting system of goods to people for shelves and bulk items, which is typical of AGV (automatic guided vehicle). Anhui new Guochuang Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. is a company specializing in customized AGV.
5. Picking system of goods to people
There are many types of goods to people picking system. Here are two main types:
Automatic horizontal revolving warehouse: it is mainly used for box storage. The disadvantage of this system is that the whole inventory is rotating when it is rotating, and the energy consumption is high when it is used. If the inventory is small, it is not cost-effective and the cost is expensive;
Automatic vertical revolving warehouse: it mainly sorts small items such as screw electronic components and medicines. You may have seen this kind of sorting used in medicine occasions in hospitals.
How to build its own intelligent storage system
How can an enterprise build its own exclusive intelligent storage system? It mainly focuses on the planning principles of intelligent storage, the planning of site process plan, the determination of intelligent equipment options and technical parameters, and the quality control of project implementation.
1. Planning principles of intelligent storage
No matter how advanced intelligent software and hardware are used, they must be rooted in the actual situation of the enterprise.
It is necessary to have clear strategic positioning, reasonable business growth rate prediction positioning, and suitable and advanced information architecture planning.
For equipment technology, it is better to select the mature and advanced ones rather than the outdated ones; select the ones with high efficiency rather than the ones with the highest efficiency
The scheme shall be flexible and extensible as much as possible
The scale of production capacity involves not too much ahead of schedule or too tight estimation
Reduce customization as much as possible, and be as replaceable as possible
Reduce labor input, labor intensity, operation skill difficulty and error rate as much as possible
It's hard to simplify
As far as possible, the plane that can be oriented
The flow in and out of the process plan should be balanced, and bottlenecks should be avoided
2. Planning of site process plan
The rationality of process planning depends on the collection of basic data, which should be as accurate and reliable as possible. These basic data include the size, weight, external packaging, the proportion of the whole pallet / full container and unpacked parts, the number of SKUs, SKU characteristics, daily in and out of warehouse quantity, order lines, order quantity, warehouse turnover period, inventory quantity, etc.
Data collection and EIQ analysis, EIQ analysis is a prerequisite for process planning.
There are many similarities and differences between intelligent storage and traditional storage in process planning and reasonable design, which requires decision makers to break the traditional concept and not blindly design the scheme according to the inherent thinking. Some processes can be simplified and abridged. We must emancipate our minds. The so-called rationality is to meet the actual needs.
The planning of the locations and size of the functional area, such as the three-dimensional warehouse storage area, sorting area, replenishment area, review area, collection area, routing and sorting area, delivery area, etc., should be reasonably planned according to the business requirements.
The locations planning and design are also important. For example, the explosive products must be close to the packaging, recheck, delivery and other areas. In addition, where to put the returned goods, heavy goods and light goods also needs to be well designed.
Reasonable planning and design of moving line. Dynamic line is the core of warehousing planning, and all business operations are connected by dynamic line.
Job design and manpower planning. For example, according to the current business volume and processing capacity, how many people should be arranged for this position, such as replenishment, packaging, warehousing, fruit picking and other positions.
3. Control of project implementation quality
Confirm that the equipment quality meets the design requirements at any time, and keep evidence;
Draft an acceptance test specification suitable for the project to provide basis for acceptance.
Source: Hansen School of business and logistics
Can intelligent AGV not only make express delivery faster, but also have other functions?
AGV is the main equipment and machine in modern factory, which is powered by battery, equipped with electromagnetic or optical automatic navigation device, can address independently and automatically, and complete the unmanned handling operation through computer system control. At the same time, it can also complete the pick-up and release of goods. Using AGV intelligent storage robot is conducive to improving efficiency and has obvious advantages for handling. The advantages of using intelligent AGV storage robot in storage are as follows:
1. Improve logistics management - AGV trolley can make the goods placed more orderly and orderly;
2. Reliable dispatching ability: data analysis and remote control through AGV central control system;
3. Safety: the path of AGV robot's guiding movement is very clear, AGV will automatically stop when it encounters obstacles on the driving path, replacing manual work to complete dangerous work;
4. Cost control - AGV robot can save a lot of manpower and quickly recover investment, and increase employee turnover rate for boring mechanical handling work;
5. Reasonably use the existing floor area, improve the corporate image and workshop cleanliness, and realize unmanned production.