The three world’s e-commerce giants all use the unmanned system to improve the capability of their warehouse

Like the yesterday’s class showed that the warehouse has five basic operations: receiving, put away to storage, order picking, order grouping/unitizing, shipping. We can see many changes in current warehouse system. Now I want to share you with the unmanned sorting warehouse.

Jingdong was the first company that has built a system about totally unmanned warehouse.

As the video shows, all the five basic operations are done by the robot. Once the warehouse has received the goods, the Robot Arm can sort the goods and measures its weight and its volume. Then the robot arm can give a visual inspection.

Robot Arm

After that, the goods will be stored by the three-dimensional warehouse by the automatic conveyors. Here are using the stackers lifting machines and pallets or boxes to put the goods in stereoscopic warehouse.

Stereoscopic warehouse

Next when there get some orders, the goods will be sent to the robot pickup station. After picking up, the robots also can attach invoice to the courier, package automatically, attach waybill and with the conveyors system, the goods could be sorted to different location. Here we can see the company is using the supply robot, that the robot can calculate the route itself by using the QR. Every small hole corresponds to a province, when there are full of products, the system can pick them up and transport them to the truck. Finally, the truck can bring these parcels to other provinces. All of these processes are unmanned system. By the way, Alibaba also uses the supply robot.

In addition, Amazon also has their own unmanned sorting system and all the technology has saved much walking time than before. Three-dimensional warehouse has more capacity than the conventional racking.

In conclusion, all of the E-commerce giants accept the new technology to modify their procedure and improve the capability to process orders.

The changed distribution channels—taking masks as an example

Those days are very tough for me and everybody. Because when I was in China, in this moment, China was suffered the coronavirus, people could not be permitted in the streets. And the biggest problem was that we need to wear the mask when we wanted to go to supermarket. But it was very difficult to buy the masks in this time. Some retailers had some inventory about the masks, but some of them wanted to be paid for more money based on the situation of the supply and demand imbalance. Because the masks are really useful in this situation. Here you can see some information about the suggestion about wearing masks.

In this time, many manufacturers had seized the opportunity to product the masks for the public. Meanwhile, the National Health Agency had controlled the current factories. Once they had product masks, the masks would be uniformly deployed. The government just like a retailer, after receiving the demand of the province, they gave information to the factories. The factories delivered the masks like FTL to the province. At this moment, the distribute network just liked a Manufacturer Storage with Direct Shipping. There is a hand drawing about the direct shipping, may be interesting for you.

When the production gradually improved, the citizens also could get some masks in case to go shopping, but they needed to order the masks in the Internet first, and then when the community hospital received the masks, the citizens could pick the masks in this place with the previous order information. Meanwhile, the citizens also could reserve the protective suits from the manufacturer. The community hospital was a Cross-Dock DC. This distribution network is Manufacturer or Distributor warehouse Storage with Customer Pickup.

And there were established many small factories for produce different types of masks and other medical protective equipment. Mouths later, the situation of China is better than before. And the production of manufacturers is very high. However, the demands of masks inside China are saturated. Therefore, some manufacturers are taking the measure about shipping directly with the retailers provide the information flow. This has changed to the first one way. But the role of retailer is not the government anymore. It’s the real retailer.

Nowadays, the coronavirus spreads fast. All the world may need the qualified masks. There are many distributors who collect the materials and import to other countries by carriers, such as Amazon and Alibaba, some bigger companies. Then, there are many small distributors, they would like to do the resell to the customers in the abroad. This distribution network just called Distributor Storage with Carriers Delivery.

The world is changing, for every company, there won’t be one distribution network. With the marketing is changing, choosing the right distributed way to deliver could reduce the cost and attract more customer.

distribution network analysis of media market

the supermarkets in spain are currently facing severe delivery problems–they have chosen the different distribution network

Recently in Spain, the coronavirus spreads very quickly and the government has token some measures to control the situation just like the citizen can not leave home unless they have some reasons, such as walk the dog, buy daily necessities and so on. All the people have been told that “quédate en casa”. Many people obey this policy and they do not want to leave home. The supermarkets also have the limitation about the quantity of the customer in the same time. So sometimes customers need to stand in long lines. The waiting time also increases. Moreover, if you go to the supermarket too late, you may can not get the fresh meat, they are totally out of stock. Based on these three main reasons, the customers would like to order the necessities via Internet. It’s convenient and can reduce the risk of leaving home.

Many supermarkets have the responsibility to meet the demands of the customers. Usually, the supermarkets have the distribution network “manufacturer storage with direct shipping and in-transit merge, like Consum has the policy to deliver the goods to house that will need 7 euros. Mercadona needs 7.21euros for delivery service. About LIDL, every product needs 3.99 euros. All these supermarkets can provide the goods at the same day once you can get the opportunity. Suddenly, the demands of the carriers increased. They supermarkets are facing problem to delivery to home for customers. As for keeping the service, Mercadona has stopped the service in the Internet. They are concentrated on the off-line service.

With the problem, there are many profits in the marketing. We need to improve the situation while we need to take social responsibility. In my opinion, we can take some measures to solve the problem. First, the supermarkets could corporate with Glovo that is a platform to deliver food to home. Then, the supermarkets could strengthen the information infrastructure and renew the inventory on time and delivery them on time with the part-time workers. Finally, to reduce the waiting time to look for the product, they could use the “customer pickup”. The supermarkets could accept the order from the Internet o call, the customers could pickup in the store that can reduce the cost of transportation, though that could hurt the customer experience.

We are in a difficult situation. Ensuring the supply of basic living materials will make residents more confident and it can help to guarantee the order of society. The time of suffering will eventually pass! The delivery is essential factor in this environment that can help a lot!