(Original title: Demystifying Amazon's Play Storage Sorting Technology)
Chen Hao
[The current number of Amazon Prime members is 8 times the number of members of the Amazon Prime membership service in China in the first month. The overseas sales in the first quarter of 2017 were 11 times that of the first quarter of 2015. ]
On July 11th, Amazon's third Global Primetime Day was officially opened. Chinese Prime members participated for the first time. This means that Amazon needs to mobilize the resources of global warehousing logistics and ensure that Chinese members receive overseas direct mail in the shortest possible time. package.
"Every time behind big promotion, it is actually a relay race for cross-border logistics." Sun Haoqing, vice president of operations of Amazon Global Logistics of China, told reporters that Amazon's global logistics capability is a guarantee for the development of cross-border e-commerce in Amazon.
At present, the number of Amazon Prime members is eight times that of the Amazon Prime membership service in China. The overseas sales in the first quarter of 2017 were 11 times that of the first quarter of 2015.
Recently, the First Financial reporter visited the Amazon operation center in Kunshan and learned how to integrate global network resources and its intelligent cross-border logistics system operation.
Global Layout Operations Center
Logistics has always been one of the most important factors restricting Chinese consumers' cross-border online shopping. According to a research report released by iResearch before, an internet research organization, 29.9% of the users surveyed abandoned the purchase due to high freight costs and 20.1% of users because of the long logistics time.
Therefore, whether it is domestic Taobao, Jingdong, or Amazon abroad, they are investing in and controlling the logistics field.
According to report, Taobao currently conducts e-commerce delivery through private courier companies such as Santongyida, while Jingdong has built its own logistics system. Amazon also has its own logistics operation section and has deployed more than 140 operation centers around the world.
Kunshan Operation Center located in the surrounding area of ​​Shanghai is one of them. It will be put into operation in 2011. There are 2 warehouses with an area of ​​80,000 square meters.
Entering the operation center, the reporter saw products of different categories, including books, food, electronic products, etc., placed on a shelf about 8 meters high. After the goods enter the warehouse, the staff will place them on different shelves according to the distribution of the system and consume. After the order is placed, the system will trigger further sorting tasks. The staff will then pick the goods according to the system's set picking route and send them to the packing group.
At first glance, these racks are not much different from the racks in the warehouses of general logistics express delivery companies, but the staff of the operation center told the reporter that in fact, each location here has a unique code, and the two-dimensional code is every item. The ID card, which is equivalent to a GPS, can locate the product in the system and achieve accurate global inventory positioning.
According to the reporter, Amazon has 99 major overseas operation centers. The orders placed by Chinese customers through Amazon's overseas purchases are sent directly to China by Amazon's overseas operations centers.
In some smart operation centers, Amazon has already begun to use Kiva intelligent robots to accelerate order sorting and delivery. The Kiva robot cooperates with employees to pick goods, automatically delivers order goods to the staff, and accelerates order picking through human-machine collaboration. And processing speed.
Kiva smart robot was provided by Amazon robot manufacturer Kiva Systems, which was purchased by Amazon in 2012 for US$775 million. Currently, more than 80,000 Kiva smart robots have been working in Amazon's 25 smart operation centers all over the world, but in China, Amazon has not yet enabled Kiva smart. Robots replace manpower.
In addition to the use of smart robots, products will be weighed, labelled, scanned, etc., after the package is wrapped by Slam's integrated operation equipment. It will take only a few seconds to sort manually and laboriously. carry out. What's more, it can also automatically correct errors, quickly identifying high-precision weighing capabilities and rejecting incorrectly picked parcels.
Big data-based smart system
However, Sun Haoqing also pointed out to reporters that whether it is an intelligent robot or a drone, it is only part of the intelligent supply chain. What the company is paying more attention to is how to reduce manual intervention and improve the accuracy of distribution through the continuous optimization of intelligent systems. Rate and efficiency. "In this regard, big data is the cornerstone, and Kiva, drones, etc. are only supportive."
Huang Gang, a domestic logistics and supply chain expert, also introduced that Amazon was the first e-commerce company to play with big data on logistics. It was the first in the industry to use big data, artificial intelligence and cloud technology to manage warehousing and logistics, and introduced predictive allocation and cross-regional Distribution, cross-border distribution and other services.
For example, at the China Amazon Operations Center, the entire order processing can be completed within 30 minutes at the fastest. That is, orders can be processed and shipped out within 30 minutes after orders are placed, from order processing, quick picking, quick packaging, sorting and everything else. All driven by big data, and full visualization.
In addition, Amazon has a set of technologies based on big data analysis to help accurately analyze customer needs. For example, the back office system records the customer's browsing history, and the back office will place the customer's interesting inventory at the nearest operation center, which facilitates the customer to place orders.
And when the consumer browses the page, the intelligent system can also calculate from the hundreds of delivery solutions within a few milliseconds which delivery method is the quickest and the customer experience is the best when the goods are delivered at the promised time. In order to achieve dynamic deployment of different warehouse inventory, achieve efficient delivery as soon as possible.
The reporter also saw Kunshan Operations Center that basically no one in any area would be surrounded by a lot of people. The staff introduced that this is mainly due to Amazon's backend has a set of data algorithms that will give everyone random optimization of the picking path. The picking staff takes the scanning gun and knows where to pick the next pick, and never to go back.
“Our picking path in the warehouse is optimized through an intelligent system, and the picker walks only about 3 miles (about 5 kilometers).†Wang Haoru, operations manager of Amazon Kunshan Operations Center, told reporters, “We used to have It is estimated that if there is no smart system, each picker will walk 17 miles (about 27 kilometers) each day."
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