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.

Share: