Makestar Intelligence's unmanned warehouse technology development

In recent years, various domestic warehousing automation equipment has become the most important concern of the current warehousing industry. In October 2017, a...

Apr 27,2023 | Julie

In recent years, various domestic warehousing automation equipment has become the most important concern of the current warehousing industry. In October 2017, a famous e-commerce company for the first time released a public video of products being moved through a cell phone warehouse system, causing widespread attention in the warehousing industry. How to use automated equipment to completely replace workers and achieve a truly unmanned warehouse has become the dream of countless warehouse practitioners and technicians.

Concept and development status of unmanned warehouses

As opposed to merely understanding an unmanned warehouse as a warehouse without people, technically speaking, an unmanned warehouse refers to the use of warehouse automation equipment to achieve the overall unmanned warehouse operations.

Up to now, there is no warehouse without people in the world. In the unmanned warehouse, we simply use automated equipment to replace the original operators to complete the warehouse operations, but also increase a large number of personnel who are responsible for various aspects of the organization's logistics system and its operation. The more automated equipment used, the more complex the design of the logistics system, and the more personnel necessary to maintain and operate it. Because of this, if the warehouse operation process is more simple, it is easier to achieve through automated equipment to replace manual operations; conversely, if the warehouse operation process is more complex, and there is a diversity of methods employed, it becomes harder to standardize operations and achieve automation using technology alone.

Many warehouses in developed countries operate unmanned; theseamr robotics warehouses have the following characteristics:

In terms of the whole box storage, the commodity boxing is very standard;

There isn't a lot of variety in the goods;

A single shipment of a commodity is relatively large, and even an entire pallet can be removed from the warehouse.

Currently, the domestic hot e-commerce warehousing industry usually does not have the above characteristics, most of the e-commerce warehouse is characterized by a wide range of goods, size and shape irregularities, each order often contains a variety of goods, and often only 1 to 2 pieces of each commodity, the entire e-commerce warehouse operation process is complex and there is diversity. So in the e-commerce warehousing industry, a fully automated warehouse using equipment is often called the unmanned warehouse field "crown jewel". At the same time, because most warehouses do not currently have the conditions to achieve unmanned warehousing, so at this stage, realizing unmanned warehousing is only a beautiful dream. A more practical storage design program would use a variety of automated equipment to achieve 'less humanized', rather than simply pursuing 'unmanned' warehousing.

However, the industry practitioners of the unmanned warehouse of the beautiful response to a common problem - the traditional manual warehouse operation mode will certainly go to the decline. The main reasons are: (1) the cost of warehousing labor continues to rise; (2) the new generation of labor is not interested in the traditional warehousing industry, can not recruit employees; (3) personnel management is too difficult, manual operations are inefficient; (4) warehouse throughput fluctuations, the need for frequent recruitment of temporary workers, dismissal of temporary workers. These problems will only get worse, through the management simply can not be solved, so there is today's warehouse automation equipment market prosperity. Even if today's warehouse automation equipment is still difficult to achieve the unmanned warehouse operations as a whole, but I firmly believe that, with the continued rise in labor costs, as well as warehouse automation equipment in the full market competition after the price decline, the next 3 to 5 years, the number of warehouse operators in China will reach the peak, after which will enter a gradual decline trend.

Until a technological breakthrough in warehouse automation finally reaches the unmanned warehouse, the use of automated equipment to achieve a "less people warehouse" is only possible if the industry relies solely on current technical capabilities, so the rising cost of labor and the reduction of automation equipment prices to a certain point will soon become a reality.