Oct 28, 2019|
JD.com unveils China’s first 5G-powered smart logistics park
JD.com today announced the launch of China’s first 5G-powered smart logistics park in Beijing, China. China’s largest retailer continually breaks new ground through its own logistics business, JD Logistics, to keep the customer continually at the center. Aligning with its Industrial IoT (IIoT) strategy, the park implements 5G networks at its Asia No. 1 Warehouse in Beijing.
The bandwidth offered by 5G will enable JD to dramatically increase the efficiency of its IIoT fulfilment capacities on a large scale, facilitating instantaneous communication between human employees and smart machines, while enabling holistic monitoring of the site’s operations.
The facility’s newly implemented monitoring system will detect and analyze any problems occurring in the warehouse in real time. The technology will enable real-time monitoring of location and routes for forklifts and pallets, and provide preemptive alerts if something abnormal arises. For example, the technology would enable provision of wrong parking location alerts and abnormal driving route alerts for the forklifts to ensure efficiency and safety. Mass pallet monitoring will significantly increase efficiency improvement over manual monitoring. The 5G system will also greatly improve the efficiency of operations within the facility through smart parking which guides incoming vehicles to the most appropriate parking space or docking bay, and digital docking bay which can do real-time monitoring the truck loading and uploading goods.
These innovations are just the beginning of JD’s plans to utilize 5G technology. In the future, 5G-powered IIoT will drive a range of further applications across JD’s logistics operations, improving efficiency throughout the supply chain.
“The launch of JD’s 5G-powered smart logistics park in Beijing – the first of its kind – is an exciting step in the realization of the Industrial Internet of Things at scale,” said Wenming Zhe, chief architect of logistics R&D, head of 5G-powered smart logistics park projects at JD Logistics. “The low latency, high speed and ability to support a broad spectrum of simultaneous connections provided by 5G networks creates an unprecedented level of real-time connectivity, significantly improving the efficiency of JD’s fulfilment operations, which is key to providing the best customer service in the business.”
JD’s 5G-powered smart logistics park is an important development in the company’s strategy to utilize 5G networks in the application of IIoT technology across the company’s supply chain operations. JD expects to apply 5G and IIoT throughout its network of logistics parks, allowing for reliable and dependable robot-to-robot communication that requires minimal human intervention.
Mar 26, 2020|
JD Supply Chain Alleviates COVID-19 Impacts, Facilitates Industry Resumption
by Yuchuan Wang
During the epidemic, JD has been continuously delivering daily necessities for consumers and aid supplies to the epidemic epicenter in Wuhan, Hubei province, all based on the company’s investment in next-generation infrastructure, including its in-house logistics network, smart supply chain and technology innovation over the last decade.
Guarantee national supply
As the world is under the stress of COVID-19, the importance of building strong supply chain capabilities is being emphasized repeatedly in helping economic recovery. According to Sarah Watt, senior director at Gartner Supply Chain, “Supply has been impacted in three primary ways: limited access to employees due to quarantines, factory closures or manufacturing slowdowns and limited access to logistics to move goods.”
Thanks JD’s early investment in smart supply chain, which dates back to 2007, the company has been able to be extremely agile in supplying goods during the epidemic period. JD collaborated with suppliers to efficiently allocate goods, worked with manufacturers to resume production based on big data analysis and maintained continuously delivery across the country, even in Wuhan.
From January 20th to February 28th, JD supplied 220 million products to its nationwide consumers including 290,000 tons of rice and flour, eggs and vegetables. JD Logistics transported 50 million medical supplies, and JD Health collaborated with over 13,000 offline pharmacies to provide 30-minute delivery service.
JD’s supply chain also helped 3,900 tons of agricultural products that risked becoming unsellable due to the coronavirus outbreak to be delivered to consumers nationwide. For example, in Hefeng county, Enshi city in Hubei province, JD helped 350 local farmers make 50 tons of citrus for sale online, with over 1,500 orders per day.
Help brick-and-mortar stores resume business online
Through various omnichannel solutions, JD is helping tens of thousands of offline stores resume business online.
With the help of JD, over 700 Five Star Appliance’s stores are transforming into community warehouses to supply online orders from social platforms such as WeChat groups. It also helps JD sell online inventory, which is fulfilled by JD Logistics.
Based on Location-Based-Services (LBS), JD’s online sales events are enabling offline stores to interact with and deliver to its surrounding consumers. In addition, JD Live helps offline stores conduct live streams to attract consumers.
Ensure enterprises resume operations
TIEM is a manufacturer for gaming products in China. Affected by COVID-19, the company faced factory shutdown. JD quickly provided support in warehousing, logistics and supply chain financing for TIEM, helping the company fulfill its backlogged inventory and reach even more consumers.
At the same time, the company has helped support work resumption needs such as office supplies, protective equipment and services. JD’s enterprise procurement business JD Business has served over 1.3 million enterprise clients since the outbreak.
JD’s strong supply chain ability helped Chengdu Railway source and supply 60,000 protective supplies in as few as 48 hours.
JD also helped Deyin, an MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) products supplier from Qingdao, Shandong province, sell nearly RMB 1 million in products in half a month, helping the company increase revenue even when operations were temporarily shut down.
To get a sense of JD’s smart supply chain capabilities, take a look at the graphic below:
Young Consumers in China Drive Demand for Top Quality Bird’s Nest
