The logistics equipment industry accelerates the rise

JD Logistics Asia No. 1 Intelligent Industrial Park automatically sorted. Photo by Xiao Yang (People's Vision)

"Little Yellow Man" in Shentong Express Sorting System is sorting the express delivery. Application of name (people's vision)

From 2012 to 2021, my country's express annual business volume increased from 5.7 billion pieces to 108.3 billion pieces, an increase of 18 times. Since 2014, the business volume has stabilized the world for 8 consecutive years.

The huge market, massive business, and high timeliness are inseparable from the help of automation and intelligent logistics equipment. As of the end of June this year, there were more than 400 fully sorting centers in the industry.

As a service industry, how does the express industry drive upstream manufacturing development? What kind of sparks are there in the three or three industries? The reporter interviewed.

New demand has spawned new industries, and the first domestic equipment realizes commercial use

The quantity of China's express delivery business has been turned into a curve over the past 15 years, and its suddenly rising slope is quite dazzling. In 2007, it exceeded 1 billion; in 2010, it reached 2 billion steps; in 2014, it across the 10 billion mark to achieve historic breakthroughs.

However, the business volume of high -speed growth also brings the problem of "liquidation". Since 2009, during the "Double 11" period, massive parcels are concentrated into the express network, staying in multiple links such as transfer centers and terminal outlets, and express delivery becomes "slow" at all.

How to do? The industry reaches consensus: putting on equipment and using technology to solve the bottleneck of lack of manpower. After inspection at home and abroad, the person in charge of the courier company was quite distressed: there were no related suppliers in China; imports, a set of equipment was 30,000 to 40 million yuan, and the company could not bear it.

At this time, Li Gongyan, the founder of China Science and Technology, seized a new market opportunity. In Li Gongyan's view, the underlying technology of express delivery equipment has been verified in the laboratory for more than 10 years. The technology is very mature. The only thing that needs to be done is to achieve commercial conversion.

In May 2016, Li Gongyan's first set of cross -courier package sorting system prototypes were completed. In the same month, the team and China Science and Technology Micro Investment jointly established Zhongke Micro. The first device sells for about 10 million yuan, but the price of imported equipment is 1/3 to 1/4.

"The breakthrough of the first set is the most difficult, and we encountered a good time." Said Yao Yi, general manager of Zhongke Micro to Company. In 2016, the electronic face order has gradually replaced the handwritten face order, laying a solid foundation for the realization of automated sorting. At the same time, consumers are no longer willing to endure "slow delivery", and express delivery companies must make changes under pressure.

The first company that cooperates with China Science and Technology is Zhongtong Express. In November 2016, the automatic sorting equipment of Zhongke Micro -Zhizhi was officially operated at Zhongtong Express Dongguan Dialing Center. The addition of automated equipment has reduced the number of operators of the transfer center from 400 to 85, but the daily processing volume increased from 400,000 to 500,000, and the accuracy of sorting was increased to 99%.

After tasted the sweetness, the courier companies went to the horse to automatically sort the equipment. In 2018, the number of automatic sorting equipment invested by Zhongtong has doubled from the previous year; Yuantong invested nearly 40 sets of automated sorting equipment to transform the nearly half of the transfer center.

The popular market has attracted more manufacturers to join, and the entry of competitors has also accelerated the pace of industry innovation. In 2018, a "Little Yellow Man" robot was born in the air, providing new problem solving ideas for automatic courier sorting.

The "Little Yellow Man" robot is developed and produced by Zhejiang Ling Dart Robot Company. Different from the automation sorting line, the dart robot will design the sorting center into two floors. The upper floor is a robot work platform. The lower level is the sorting of the income area. The robot automatically identifies the address, automatically plan the route, and then puts the package into the corresponding income area. Once the "Little Yellow Man" robot appeared, it was favored by Shentong and was successively put into use in its transfer center in Zhejiang, Shandong, and Henan.

Since then, the logistics equipment industry has entered a period of rapid development, and new enterprises such as China Post Technology, New Beiyang, Dema Technology, and Jinfeng Logistics have emerged. As of the end of 2019, China's express delivery industry has built over 5,000 kilometers of automated assembly lines, which is equivalent to the total mileage of China Metro. Data show that in 2021, my country's automatic sorting equipment market is about 26 billion yuan, and the annual growth rate is about 21.8%. Among them, the 13 head courier sorting equipment vendors realized revenue of 14.81 billion yuan, an increase of 44.2%year -on -year.

Supply and demand collaborative innovation, core algorithms and chips autonomous and controllable

In a short period of time, explosive growth is achieved, and the domestic logistics equipment industry has taken a road of assembly and integration.

"Most of the core components of domestic integrators need to be purchased out, and many key components also rely on imports. As the competition intensifies, the core components are becoming more important in their own hands." Yao Yi said.

The most critical part of realizing the automatic sorting of express delivery is "reading code". That is, when the courier flows at a high speed on the sorting belt, the device can grasp and read the barcode of the package in time to accurately determine the next destination of the package. To achieve this function, the intelligent visual system is inseparable.

"Take the 8K high -speed dynamic barcode recognition camera commonly used by equipment as an example. Originally, we all rely on imports, and the entry price of a camera was 200,000 yuan." Yao Yi introduced that after several years of research, China Science and Micro was in the core algorithm and equipment of the camera to the camera's core algorithm and equipment. Structures, key units, etc. are all realized in terms of domestic replacement. Not only that, the camera recognition rate of China Science and Technology to independently develops is 0.5 to 1 percentage points higher than imported products. It can effectively respond to the problems of barcode dirt loss, folds, deformation, tilt, blur, etc. The accuracy rate reaches more than 99%.

Equipment companies are struggling, and courier companies have also begun to cooperate with suppliers to cooperate with them.

In response to the "code reading" link, Yuantong established a joint research team with suppliers to innovatively combine industrial cameras, upper machines, reinforcement components and cross -bands in the industry. This combined device can be scanned and weighs, and can upload information such as the package code, weight, corresponding outlet code and other information to the business system to achieve the integration of digital tools and automation equipment. At present, with the help of this innovative equipment, the 4 -story automation sorting equipment of the Chengdu Marketing Center can reach 190,000 votes per hour, and the accuracy of the equipment sorting is close to 99.9%.

The collaborative innovation of both sides of supply and demand has continued into the intelligent transformation of logistics equipment.

Today, in the automatic checkout session of many supermarkets, consumers can automatically scan and calculate the style, unit price, total number and total price of the product as long as the purchased items are placed in the automatic checkout machine. "We hope that the future of smart logistics is the same. Wherever the goods go, the equipment can automatically identify and intelligent analysis." Said Xu Jun, the head of the rookie logistics technology product technology department.

The implementation of this scene is inseparable from the RFID (radio frequency recognition) chip. For a long time, RFID chips and readers have been monopolized by foreign companies. In order to achieve the intelligent upgrade of the industry, Cainiao Logistics, JD.com, SF and other companies have made great efforts to develop and manufacture the RFID chip.

"The RFID chip looks as soft as a transparent tape. From the perspective of manufacturing, the RFID chip's requirements for the manufacturing process are much lower than that of the mobile phone chip, but the algorithm in the chip is very high." Xu Jun said, compared to clothing, compared to clothing, compared to clothing , Commercial Super Application scenarios, the logistics scenarios are more complicated, and the accuracy of RFID has higher requirements. To this end, Cainiao Logistics focuses on the label design, reading and writing, and algorithm optimization of RFID, and increases the accuracy of the RFID chip to 99.97%. At the same time, join hands with upstream semiconductor suppliers to develop a dedicated RFID chip for logistics to reduce the price of RFID chips to 0.1 to 0.2 yuan, providing possibilities for large -scale applications.

Logistics equipment is out of sea, and is recognized by overseas customers

The Chinese market is huge and strict. With the test of the market, domestic logistics equipment companies have begun to break into the global market.

Equipment companies take the lead in going to sea and win the market with quality.

Signing a smart logistics system project with nearly 200 million yuan with the largest e -commerce company Coupang; participating in the smart logistics project of the largest e -commerce Ozon company in Russia; the smart distribution center project for the Southeast Asia's largest e -commerce SHOPEE; signed Spain, Germany and the United States Cross -border e -commerce intelligent logistics project orders ... In 2021, Dema Technology has taken a substantial step.

At present, Dema Technology has initially established a global manufacturing network of "Central Factory+Global Factory+Localized Cooperative Equipment Factory", and has established marketing service centers in India, Vietnam, Brazil, Japan, Australia and other countries. From 2019 to 2021, overseas sales revenue was 167 million yuan, 211 million yuan, and 334 million yuan, respectively.

China Science and Technology also actively developed overseas markets. The products have been exported to Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, North America, South America and other countries and regions. As of the end of June this year, the company's hand order contract amount totaling was about 2.480 billion yuan, and overseas markets accounted for 18.63%.

Logistics enterprises incarnate overall solutions suppliers, driving equipment to go out.

On June 17 this year, the core equipment and components required for Pakistan's first automated express delivery center construction started from Shanghai Port.

In August, the equipment filled with 5 containers officially arrived at Karachi and Lerrel, Pakistan. "All the equipment in the distribution center, even each screw is made in China." The relevant person in charge of the Cainiao Logistics Pakistan project said that the 20 -person team of Cainiao Logistics will be stationed for 4 months to complete the installation and commissioning of the equipment to help Pakistan e -commerce Daraz is preparing for "Double 11".

Daraz E -commerce, the person in charge of the project, said Usman Koulech that he went to China to visit the Express Transfer Center a few years ago, which was impressed by the automated equipment there. Dialing time, we spent 4 hours to complete in the past, and now we can complete it in 1 hour. "

Express companies try to go out to sea and have "step by step".

In recent years, the internationalization pace of courier companies has continued to accelerate. After farming the Southeast Asian market, Ji Rabbit Express officially operated in Mexico and Brazil in 2022. At present, the business scope has covered 12 countries including Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Cainiao logistics has been established in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and other places Overseas warehouses, distribution centers ... Without exceptions, these companies are drifting out of the sea with domestic logistics equipment. "The cost -effectiveness, reliability, stability, and work efficiency of Chinese logistics equipment are the highest." Xu Jun said.

Source: People's Daily Online

Reporter: Li Xinping

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