Checking Out the Latest Warehouse and Logistics Technology
It goes without saying that warehousing and logistics are critical to any e-commerce business. And in this space, technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace.
Not too long ago, we were invited by Sagawa Global Logistics to tour their next-generation large-scale logistics center, "X Frontier."
In this article, we want to take a look at the latest developments in warehousing — an area inseparable from e-commerce — and explore what's inside "X Frontier."
The Evolution of Warehouse Technology
Warehouse automation is advancing in many areas.
While automation certainly helps reduce labor costs, it also enables a wide range of efficiency gains by designing warehouse layouts around machines rather than people.
Amazon's ability to offer next-day delivery is thanks in large part to its investments in warehouse automation and efficiency, starting with the acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012.
According to a 2018 announcement by Fast Retailing (UNIQLO), in collaboration with Daifuku, automating the Ariake warehouse yielded the following results. The efficiency gains were remarkable.
with Daifuku Co., Ltd.
Now let's take a look at the technologies that power this warehouse automation.
Storage
In e-commerce, where product variety is vast, there are inevitably items that sell infrequently — so-called long-tail products.
These items need to be kept in stock, but since they aren't retrieved often, it's ideal to store them in a way that takes up as little space as possible.
On the 5th floor of X Frontier, the seamless EC platform for these types of products leverages every inch of vertical space, enabling highly efficient storage that only machines can manage.
Here's what it looks like from above.
Items are retrieved as shown below (we had them run a demo with empty units).
Automated Transport
When you picture outbound fulfillment in a warehouse, you probably imagine a worker walking to a shelf to retrieve an item and then carrying it to the required location. As we were told on-site, before automation, most of the work in the warehouse consisted of simply walking around.
But times have changed.
Instead of people going to the shelves, the shelves come to the people. The goods move. This eliminates the need for workers to walk around, and since items no longer need to be stored in a way that's easy for humans to navigate, storage efficiency increases dramatically.
We were shown two types of autonomous transport robots on-site. The first is a robot that brings shelves directly to the worker.
The second is a robot that autonomously transports items retrieved from shelves to a designated location.
Although not shown in the video, this robot operates in the same aisles as people, and was able to detect and avoid or stop for humans!
Picking
One area that remains particularly challenging to automate is order picking. Since products vary in size, shape, and softness, each item must be handled differently.
Mujin, a Japanese company, provides technology that enables robots to learn autonomously, allowing them to pick each product correctly. The author visited their office as a student — they had converted an entire warehouse floor into their workspace, and you could see robot arms picking a wide variety of products. More recently, they have partnered with Fast Retailing to automate UNIQLO's warehouses as well.
Packaging
Similar to the picking challenge, products come in all different sizes, which means you'd seemingly need a corresponding variety of cardboard box sizes on hand.
However, not only does every product have a different optimal box size, but determining which size box to use for each item every single time is also a significant burden.
The technology we were shown on-site solves all of these problems at once. The solution automatically measures the dimensions of each product and then fabricates a custom cardboard box on the spot from a large sheet of corrugated material. The video below shows it better than any description.
The finished product looks like this. It was actually sturdier than a regular cardboard box.
Outbound Shipping
We weren't able to see it during our visit, but we were told that packaged items travel by conveyor belt directly to waiting trucks. The building itself appears to be structurally designed to move goods smoothly all the way to the trucks.
As a result of all these efficiency improvements, X Frontier — in partnership with Sagawa Express's relay center located within the same facility — can deliver orders placed late at night within the 23 wards of Tokyo as early as the same morning.
Conclusion
In this article, we introduced the evolution of warehouse and logistics technology, and how it is being put to practical use at "X Frontier."
E-commerce and warehousing/logistics are deeply intertwined. While growing sales is the primary goal, if warehouse and logistics operations can't keep pace with that growth, delivery delays and disruptions can occur — and in some cases, make it impossible to continue selling. Recently, there was even news of a major e-commerce service accidentally shipping empty boxes due to logistics breakdowns.
As you consider what kind of logistics infrastructure your growth strategy will require, it's becoming increasingly important to factor in the kinds of technological options we've introduced here.