SMARTER LOGISTICS PARKS

By Huang Jiangqin

The automated stereoscopic warehouse at JD’s Asia No.1 Smart Logistics Park in Xi’an,Shaanxi Province. (VCG)

“The digital economy has become a new engine of global economic growth,and application of digital technology is driving a digital transformation of traditional industries,” said Zhu Jialiang,deputy director of the Beijing Branch of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade,at the Forum on Logistics Industry Development through Digital Transformation in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region on October 19.Logistics enterprises should be acutely aware of the need to adapt to the new development trend and complete digital transformation and smart upgrading,Zhu stressed.

Smart technology is an important tool of the express logistics industry and an important component of modern logistics operation systems characterized as “passages plus hubs and networks.” Many logistics parks nationwide are harnessing the growth momentum of digital technology to boost efficiency.Through hardware infrastructure,they are seeking to improve their services and competitiveness by applying digital smart technologies.

More Efficient Sorting

According to October 23 real-time monitoring data from the State Post Bureau,a Bosideng down jacket distributed by e-commerce giant JD’s Asia No.1 Smart Logistics Park in Qingdao,Shandong Province,became the country’s 100 billionth express delivery package in 2023.At noon,six hours after Ms.Liu,a customer in Qingdao,placed her order online,the package was delivered to her by a JD courier.

JD’s smart logistics park in Qingdao is one of dozens of large-scale smart logistics parks operated by JD Logistics nationwide.Covering an area of over 330,000 square meters,the park stores more than a million SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit,the basic unit of inventory entry and exit measurement,which can be pieces,boxes,pallets and other units) of small,medium and large goods including 3C digital,rice,flour,grain,oil,and household appliances.

How does the park ensure the accuracy,sorting speed,and distribution of such a massive inventory of goods?

The park has been equipped with an ultra-fast automatic matrix,ultra-fast cross belt sorting system,high-speed stem-branch loading line,narrow-band highspeed sorting line,automatic sorting line for irregular items,and other intelligent devices.Combined with application of hybrid code reading technology and Radio Frequency Identification Technology (RFID) with intelligent pattern recognition,99.99 percent sorting accuracy has been achieved.The park can track the movement of each package with the dynamic vision technology and photoelectric induction technology to ensure packages navigate the conveyor belt at a high speed without colliding.

Express delivery trucks ready to depart JD’s Asia No.1 Smart Logistics Park in Kunshan,Jiangsu Province,on June 13,2023.(VCG)

On the eve of this year’s Double 11 shopping festival,JD’s smart logistics park in Qingdao completed an upgrade of its automated sorting center,which significantly improved its automatic sorting performance and production capacity.Packages enter and exit in barely 10 minutes,more than five times more efficient than manual sorting.

The park is also collaborating with JD’s smart logistics park in Dezhou,Shandong Province,to build a logistics storage and distribution network covering the whole province and radiating to Shanxi,Hebei,and Henan provinces with support from warehouses in neighboring cities.Upon the completion of this network,consumers in the region and neighboring regions will enjoy quality delivery services within 6 to 12 hours after placing an order online.

Representing China’s new smart logistics infrastructure,JD’s Asia No.1 Smart Logistics Park has been in operation for 10 years since its inaugural outlet began operations in Shanghai in 2014.Over the last 10 years,JD has built dozens of smart logistics parks in more than 20 provinces and municipalities nationwide.During this year’s 618 midyear shopping festival,construction of the second phase of Kunshan Asia No.1 Smart Logistics Park was completed.It is now the world’s largest fully-functioning smart logistics park.With more than 80 automatic sorting lines and 10,000 smart sorting robots,the park is 99.99 percent accurate in sorting.During the latest 618,the sorting center operated 24 hours a day,handling over 4.5 million packages per day on average.

By forging a solution integrating the intelligent management and control system,the digital production system,and the unmanned security system,JD’s Asia No.1 Smart Logistics Parks have realized efficient automatic perception of logistics information,accurate collection of data,optimal scheduling of resources,and intelligent decisionmaking for operations.

So far,JD’s Asia No.1 has established a multi-layer supply chain infrastructure network in collaboration with more than 1,500 warehouses nationwide,which builds close links between production and consumption,promotes efficient logistics services,and propels the improvement and upgrading of the whole industrial chain.

Managing ‘Blocking Points’

According to statistics,China has more than 6,000 logistics parks of various sizes,2,000 of which cover an area of over 35 hectares.Economic development has driven the number and scale of logistics parks to continually increase.However,as important transfer stations and platforms on the supply chain,traditional logistics parks that rely heavily on manpower with high costs and low efficiency have become new“blocking points.”

Alongside problems associated with sorting and delivery,traditional logistics parks have been troubled by other problems such as long wait times for truck drivers,low efficiency of park employees,idle equipment or low utilization rate,and lacking traffic safety.During peak hours,traditional logistics parks endure considerable pressure due to simple storage inventory and site turnover.A lack of scientific management and planning,overstock of goods in warehouses,poor management of incoming and outgoing traffic,and other problems can create bottlenecks hindering efficient operations.Digital technology has solved many of these problems.

In a smart logistics park equipped with the Shunfeng Express (SF) digital smart gate,truck driver Wang is happy with the improved loading and unloading efficiency.Before departure,he makes appointments with the park to enter and sends relevant information to the park’s system to be processed in advance.Upon arrival,the park’s forklift automatically unloads and loads his truck.The whole process is automated with digital technology,saving a lot of time.

The SF digital smart gate is a comprehensive smart logistics park solution based on Amazon cloud technology.Front-end intelligent sensing devices are deployed in the park to collect data and pre-process it at the edge of the 5G network.When the large amount of unstructured data at the backstage is uploaded to the cloud,it is processed with machine learning,big data analysis,and other technologies to complete the real-time intelligent processing and analysis of the business logic data with continuous optimization of the algorithm.That is how all aspects of the logistics park,including people,vehicles,goods,warehouses,equipment,and environment,are managed in a visualized and digitized manner.

A swarm of 880 yellow sorting robots distribute all kinds of garments in Fastfish Garment’s East China Logistics Center in a smart logistics park in Huzhou,Zhejiang Province,on June 14,2023. (VCG)

“The uncontrollability and invisibility of traditional logistics parks is one of the main reasons for the blocking points,” commented Wang Sheng,chief information officer of the SF Supply Chain.Logistics supply chains are getting increasingly complex.The rise of cloud computing,big data,artificial intelligence,and other technologies has caused a gradual transformation of logistics parks.The SF digital smart gate is a result of the company’s customer service over the years.

So far,digital smart gates have been installed in more than 20 logistics parks of leading companies in multiple sectors.“The daily throughput of vehicles in parks equipped with digital smart gates has increased by 40 to 60 percent,”reported Wang Sheng.“Employee operation efficiency has increased by 30 percent,while the workload of the dispatchers and security inspectors has decreased by 50 percent.”

Application of Digital Technology in Logistics

In the era of the digital economy,nearly everyone in the logistics industry aspires to achieve a digital transformation with smart technology.They want logistics parks to operate meticulously to save energy,reduce emissions,minimize costs,and increase efficiency.Application of technologies and equipment such as unmanned warehouses,unmanned docks,and smart delivery vehicles has accelerated as has construction of new infrastructure such as digital warehouses and smart logistics parks.With the help of digital technology,logistics parks have tackled problems such as high vacancy rate,unequal input-output benefits,and difficulties in dispatching and managing people and vehicles.

Application of digital technologies such as the internet,the Internet of Things,artificial intelligence,mobile communications,and automation has made overall operations smarter.

Huang Hai,former assistant minister of commerce,talked about the advantages of the logistics industry in the application of digital technology at the 2022 Modern Logistics and Supply Chain Development Forum.“The logistics industry has two unique advantages in this regard,” he said.“The first is the large amount of data,and the other is the variety of application scenarios,both of which provide a very good,natural,and powerful foundation for application of digital technology in the industry.With the strong penetration and full coverage of the digital economy,the logistics industry can achieve rapid flow of production factors through modern information technology,and application of digital technology is an important starting point.”

According to China Smart Logistics Development Report released by the Deloitte China’s logistics and transportation team,China’s smart logistics market will reach 1 trillion yuan(US$145 billion) by 2025.Some other analysis shows that the expansion of industrial value space by 10 percent through digital transformation would create more than US$200 billion in new value every year.

In May 2022,Cainiao,a leading logistics company,released a “Smart Logistics” development plan for construction of a smart logistics park.According to the plan,the park will cultivate five listed companies in the smart logistics industry,introduce and cultivate 200 enterprises related to the industry,and host 10,000 high-caliber smart logistics professionals.The park will provide support for enterprises related to the smart logistics industry including the logistics technology supply chain,intelligent storage,and intelligent transportation.Enterprises operating in the park,located in the Yuhang District of Hangzhou,Zhejiang Province,will enjoy the district’s preferential policies for the smart logistics industry.

Zhang Shuifang,director of the Jiangsu Provincial Postal Administration,said that accelerating deployment of emerging technologies such as storage robots to provide smart storage services while attaching more importance to green development and actively developing renewable energy sources such as solar energy would further improve operational efficiency of logistics parks and attract more enterprises.

Application of digital technologies such as the internet,the Internet of Things,artificial intelligence,mobile communications,and automation has made overall operations smarter.On October 24,at the Asia International Logistics Technology and Transportation System Exhibition (CeMAT ASIA 2023),JD Logistics exhibited three hardware products in the field of warehousing and logistics: an auto rebin wall,a twoway tote shuttle,and low-temperature delivery robots.

The two-way tote shuttle is designed for the scenarios such as goods to person (G2P) and automated picking and sorting,which can assist in accessing boxes or goods in deep stacks and improve efficiency markedly.Lowtemperature delivery robots can operate in an environment at minus 20 degrees Celsius in a flexible and smart manner,which can reduce the workload of employees and operating costs.

However,Du Yang,an analyst with the research institute of the Bank of China,noted that managers should pay attention to the risks that may arise accordingly.“With the help of big data,artificial intelligence,cloud computing,blockchain,and other digital technologies,we can further alleviate emerging problems in this process such as information asymmetry,high operating costs,and large market risks,”he said.

Zhang Shuifang also noted that while providing customers with intelligent access,handling,sorting,and warehousing solutions,it is also necessary to build a comprehensive smart management platform simultaneously.Comprehensive online information and data tracking warehouses,people,vehicles,and goods will enhance digital operations and supervision and improve efficiency and safety.