On April 7, Megvii launched 3D pallet shuttle system, which is a kind of flexible solution around pallet storage and handling scenario. It is easy to see that the commercialization of AI (artificial intelligence) technology companies in the field of intelligent logistics is increasingly exploring deeply.
Benefit from policy guidance and artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies to promote the development of China's intelligent logistics industry speed up. Data from AskCI shows that the market size of China's smart logistics reached 647.7 billion yuan in 2021, up 10.9% year-on-year, and the market size is expected to be close to 700 billion yuan in 2022.
Xu Qingcai, head of logistics business division of Megvii, told CHINA BUSINESS JOURNAL that the intelligent logistics business is one of the three core businesses of Megvii, and the reason for developing the pallet shuttle system and making it landed is because of the observation that the automation and digital intelligence upgrade of factory warehouses and logistics centers has become an inevitable choice for the industry.
Our reporter noticed that it has become more and more industry consensus that AI technology can play real value only when it is landed to specific scenes, and Megvii is one of the mainstream AI companies that took the field of intelligent logistics as the main direction earlier.
Supply chain transformation and upgrading speed up under the wave of digital intelligence
Xu Qingcai pointed out that logistics system integration is developing in the direction of standardization and modularization, and the solutions that are flexible, low initial investment cost, easy to deploy and expand will benefit more enterprises.
In his opinion, in the face of the surging digital tide, the supply chain transformation and upgrading of real enterprises is an inevitable choice in response to the requirements of the times on the one hand, and the challenges of diversified customer needs, real-time order fulfillment, rapid iteration of business models, as well as labor shortage, rising urban land costs, and rapid growth of their own material categories and stocks in the uncertain global economy on the other. However, the implementation of high difficulty, investment, high requirements for the warehouse, future expansion difficulties and other factors hinder the further spread of automation, intelligent warehousing.
Based on the industry consensus of automation and digital intelligence upgrading, Megvii has launched a complete smart logistics solution, covering automated storage system, self-researched AMR system of various categories, and smart logistics operating system platform "Megvii HeTu". For this expanded 3D pallet shuttle system, it allows users to "build blocks like, according to the need for flexible combination, to achieve" a car to run the whole warehouse ", in addition to the peak season and business growth and other changes in demand, increase or decrease vehicles.
Take a raw material manufacturer as an example, the enterprise needs 8,000 storage spaces and the factory needs 24-hour continuous production. According to the introduction, after adopting Megvii pallet shuttle system, compared with the traditional stacker crane solution, the space utilization rate can be increased by more than 20%, pallet cost can be saved by more than 40%, project implementation cycle can be shortened by more than 50%, electricity cost can be saved by more than 65%, installed capacity can be reduced by more than 65%, etc. This means that the enterprise customer can significantly reduce operation cost and put " Cost reduction and efficiency enhancement" will be put into practice.
Tang Wenbin, the co-founder of Megvii and the head of production and research of logistics business division, told reporters that for the service model of Megvii 3D pallet shuttle system, on the one hand, it provides products and solutions to end users directly, on the other hand, it opens up to expansion partners globally, provides products to integrators in the mode of sub-system, and connects them to the outside in the way of sub-system to form richer solutions To provide to the end customer.
Technology iterations in specialized areas
Domestic manufacturers are expected to "bend and overtake"
The China Chief Scientist of Fraunhofer Institute for Logistics, Germany, the Chinese director of Sino-German Institute of Intelligent Technology, Tongji University professor and doctoral supervisor Fang Dianjun pointed out that the pallet shuttle first originated in Europe, and evolved from the pallet shuttle system (RGV) and the child shuttle system. In terms of market application, pallet shuttle technology has been well used in the Chinese market, and there is still more room for improvement in the future, especially in terms of software and algorithm methods, as well as in the transformation of the structure.
"At present, Chinese enterprises have stood in a position to overtaking on a curve, in a way, whether we are in the structure design, or software, especially its intelligent scheduling software development, Chinese enterprises are now in the first echelon of the global position." Fang Dianjun said.
Tang Wenbin believes that there are certain differences between the market demand in Europe and the United States and China. Europe and the United States are more consumer-oriented, and their logistics automation solutions are mainly focused on box-based scenarios, while China is not only a big consumer country, but also a big manufacturing country, so the pallet-based solutions have a very large demand space. In terms of market demand, the pain points solved by pallet type include large-scale and high-density storage, as well as fast handling and whole-box picking, so storage, handling and whole-box picking make up the demand for pallet type applications now.
Fang Dianjun suggested that enterprises choose pallet shuttle solutions for upgrading factory warehouses or logistics centers, should recognize that pallet shuttle is a system engineering, to choose more mature, lean design products, and at the same time to pay attention to the software and computing power, because the pallet shuttle is more dependent on the software.
The reporter notes that Megvii started to enter the supply chain field from 2017, and compared with its earlier entry into the consumer IoT business and urban IoT business, the smart logistics business is still in the investment stage, and its contribution to revenue is in steady growth.
Smart logistics has become the development direction of modern logistics, and the value of AI technology is increasingly prominent. Xu Qingcai pointed out that many countries around the world are generally facing the problem of declining birth rate, coupled with the aging population and more and more young people are not willing to enter factories, labor shortage is increasingly prominent. digital workforce created by AI technology can fill the position and form a good mutual collaboration with people. For example, in some chemical raw material warehouses, the dust is not good for the health of operators, but now robots are used for automatic handling and storage, and people only need to supervise the operation and deal with abnormal situations in the central control room. AI can not only help enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency, but more importantly, create digital workforce.
