Other supplies and 200,000 RMB worth of masks in an hour

JD Empowers Fook with Supply Chain and Smart Logistics

Posted on Nov 23, 2020Nov 17, 2022 by Rachel Liu

by Rachel Liu

Leading Chinese convenience store brand Fook (见福) has achieved extensive expansion in Fujian province and the city of Chengdu in the past two months after cooperating with JD.

Fook is the largest convenience store chain brand in Fujian province, southeast China. JD invested in Fook this August, and after leveraging JD’s supply chain and smart logistics, Fook has covered most of the areas in the 3^rd to 5^th tier cities in Fujian, and built over 100 new stores in Chengdu with one-hour delivery service.

Achieving digitalization in the convenience store industry is not easy, as the stores are usually in different geographical areas, and the direct-sale + franchise model used by Fook means higher standards on products and supply chain. According to Haifeng Chen, general manager of strategy innovation at JD FMCG Omnichannel, JD’s support for Fook mainly covers supply chain, products and omnichannel marketing.

On supply chain management, JD has launched the Fook Flagship store to introduce iconic products from Fujian province to customers from all over China. JD also used big data to analyze the most popular products in Fujian as a supplement to Fook’s supply chain. JD’s Location Based Service allows customers to enjoy on-demand delivery when they shop on the Fook store on JD.

Fook also joined JD’s Omnichannel Fulfillment program and saw its sales of online to offline orders increase over 10 times YoY. Over 100 stores have introduced JD’s smart advertisement screen to provide cloud shelves, advertisement exposure and interaction games with customers.

JD’s extensive logistics network that can reach over hundreds of millions of customers is an important supplement to Fook’s original supply chain, which is more focused on delivering products to stores. “Fook’s business was mostly offline before. After working with JD, we have seen new development opportunities in online and offline integration,” said Li Zhang, CEO of Fook.

“JD’s participation has given us more confidence. Previously, we didn’t have that much confidence to say that we can open 30,000 or 50,000 stores. But now with JD in charge of supply chain and Fook in charge of operations, we think Fook will develop very fast in the future,” said Zhang.

(liuchang61@jd.com)

JD Health Is Committed to Mental Health Relief

Posted on Nov 23, 2020Sep 23, 2021 by Hui Zhang

by Hui Zhang

“During the epidemic, online consultation channels became the preferred platform for consultation and treatment of mental illness and psychological disorders,” said Gaohua Wang, president of the Chinese Psychiatrist Association of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association (CMDA). He made the remarks at the 16^th annual meeting of psychiatrists of CMDA on November 20^th.

JD Health is committed to helping people with mental illness by setting up psychological support platforms, facilitating the building of internet hospitals for mental health specialties, and providing livestreams to share disseminate relevant knowledge.

“As the prevention and control of the pandemic becomes normalized, “Internet + Medical Health” will continue to play an important role in the long-term efforts to help people with mental illness,” he added.

To cope with psychological problems faced by citizens and medical staff in Hubei province as a result of the coronavirus, JD Health established a public welfare platform for psychological counseling in Hubei with support from local government in September. JD Health worked with community doctors to sign dedicated service contracts with each patient recovering from the coronavirus, and offer them personalized psychological counseling support.

In March, JD Health together with Chinese Psychiatrist Association of CMDA set up a psychological consultation platform within the JD app provide free psychological services to people across China. So far, more than 5,000 psychiatrists participated in providing free consultations, providing more than 100,000 consultations in total. During the pandemic, JD Health helped Peking University Sixth Hospital, the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, and Tianjin Mental Health Center to construct online psychological consultation platforms and internet hospitals to benefit not only the medical staff working on the frontlines, but also the public across China.

JD Health also invited psychiatrists to participate in a number of livestreams, focusing on anxiety, sleep, bipolar disorder and other areas, effectively easing the anxiety of medical staff and the general public.

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

HBS Students Take a Virtual Trip to JD.com

Posted on Nov 23, 2020Sep 24, 2022 by Ella Kidron

by Ella Kidron

Harvard Business School (HBS) students took a virtual field trip to JD.com in Beijing on Nov. 20^th to hear from Natasha Li, director of supply chain planning products in the value supply chain (VSC) division at JD Logistics (JDL). In a session facilitated by HBS professors Willy Shih and Feng Zhu, Li, a veteran in the supply chain industry with over 15 years of experience, shared on the role of intelligent supply chain in JD’s business as well as the services it has opened up to external partners. Over 100 HBS students from all over the world participated in the lively hour-long discussion.

Natasha Li

“JDL is a supply chain platform based on the strategy of ‘technology-driven, leading the world’s efficient circulation and sustainable development’,” explained Li. She added: “Automation and robotics constitute the foundation of JDL’s intelligent supply chain.” This advanced technology is applied in JD’s automated warehouses as well as smart delivery stations and autonomous delivery vehicles, among many other use cases.

Natasha Li (Weijing Li) and HBS professors Willy Shih and Feng Zhu

Li cited JD’s cooperation with global conglomerate Nestlé on a large-scale smart storage and distribution center as an example. She explained that, using JD Logistics’ superior operational capabilities and technology advancements in supply chain management, the distribution center has is able to identify specific products, recognize their locations and use advanced intelligence to visualize and control the migrations or infiltrations of loads between different provinces.

Another critical application of technology is behind the scenes and heavily reliant on an intelligent solutions system. “The application of smart technology like AI has greatly improved the efficiency of our supply chain,” said Li. She explained that, through AI, JD is able to efficiently and orderly manage over six million SKUs maintaining an industry-leading 34.3 inventory turnover days, all while delivering over 90% of first party retail orders in just 24 hours.

JDL is opening up its capabilities to other companies as a service, and is becoming a platform.

JDL’s value supply chain (VSC) empowers various industries with supply chain technology. In the discussion, Li shared one example of Company W, an automobile company that is a beneficiary of JD’s VSC. She explained that the company needs to manage tens of thousands of after-sales spare parts. Previously, the company was heavily reliant on a very rudimentary Excel-based system, requiring huge amounts of manual labor and guess work, resulting in the company facing high inventory and logistics costs, no ability to conduct sales forecasts, mismatched capability planning, and inharmonious collaboration between suppliers and automobile company.

JDL’s VSC team used JD’s technology to set up a smart decision making engine, an algorithms platform covering AI, optimization and forecasting, and a simulation center. Through the “Jinghui” digital supply chain platform product, JD helped Company W realize systematization of supplier – RDC (regional distribution center) – “4S” stores, and set up demand driven forecasting, big data insights-driven decision making and more. Implementing the Jinghui system reduced the supply hierarchy and enabled the company to achieve network-wide collaboration. As a result, customer service improved 10% and inventory turnover days were reduced from 50-80 to 30-35.

Agility is one of the core advantages of JD’s supply chain and also the secret to its peak performance, as well as that of its partners. “The adoption of big data application and AI algorithms makes all aspects of the supply chain, such as demand forecasting, inventory allocation, and operations scheduling more accurate, efficient and perceptive to change.”

This is something that was made clear at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. “During the pandemic, the agility of JD’s supply chain made it possible for the company to quickly respond to emergencies and ensure the recovery of production capabilities.” For example, JDL quickly increased inventory in its various front warehouses based on consumption big data to make sure that goods were placed as close to customers and could be delivered as soon as possible. Separately, at the end of December 2019, before the official COVID-19 outbreak was called, JDL’s monitoring system flagged a significant increase in mask sales in Wuhan, Hubei province, and immediately prepared 70,000 masks for its courier in the city and carried out replenishment and internal alerts.

The session concluded with an interactive Q&A in which students asked about a wide range of topics including returns, sustainability and more. On returns, Li explained that efficient logistics for returns is an important aspect of JD’s customer service value proposition. She explained: When it is easy to make returns, it helps customers feel more comfortable about making decisions to place orders more quickly because they know that if something doesn’t fit or isn’t the right color, they can return it hassle-free. As for sustainability, Li mentioned that JD plans to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 as part of a long-term commitment to increasing sustainability in the supply chain.

(ella@jd.com)

JD Tops the Ranking of Green Packaging Actions in China’s Express Industry

Posted on Nov 20, 2020Sep 6, 2022 by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

On November 18^th, the environment-protection NGO “Plastic Free China” released an evaluation report on the green packaging actions of Chinese express companies during a virtual press conference. Among the nine major market players examined in this report, JD Logistics (JDL) was ranked the highest.

Five main dimensions of green packaging actions of express providers are evaluated by the report:

the goal and plan of green packaging actions;
information transparency regarding packaging materials;
efforts to reduce package materials;
application of circular packaging;
recycling of used packaging materials

Under this framework, the report gathered relevant information through public channels and direct inquiries from the target companies over 29 specific areas. Based on JD’s green supply chain program, known as the “Green Stream Initiative”, JD Logistics (JDL) ticked the most boxes in the survey.

Ranking of green packaging actions of main express companies in China

Source: official WeChat account of Plastic Free China

It is estimated that over 80% of express businesses in China are driven by e-commerce growth. According to the data from China’s State Administration of Market Regulation in 2020, the express industry generates more than nine million tons of paper waste and about 1.8 million tons of plastic waste every year, and the number is on the rise in the years ahead.

To tackle this issue head-on, JD launched the “Green Stream Initiative” in 2017, introducing a number of concrete waste reduction measures, including using slimmer tape, lighter plastic bags, and recycled boxes, adopting digital receipts and original packaging models in collaboration with brand partners, and employing technology to enhance the matching accuracy of the amount of cardboard required and size of parcels, just to name a few.

To date, this program, joined by over 200,000 merchants on JD’s platform, has distributed recyclable delivery boxes in nearly 30 cities in China, which have been used over 16 million times. During the past Singles Day Grand Promotion period (November 1st -November 11th), the Green Stream Initiative helped reduce packaging waste by 100,000 tons.

Additionally, JD launched the Green Packaging Alliance and China’s E-commerce & Logistics Packaging Standards Alliance, which developed the industry’s first packaging standards and is playing an important role in promoting the industry’s environmentally-friendly development.

Jerry Duan, head of the Green Stream Initiative, JD Logistics (JDL)

“It is a big challenge ahead of us, but it’s also a responsibility we must shoulder,” said Jerry Duan, head of the Green Stream Initiative. “We will continue to collaborate with our partners to build a business ecosystem that supports the sustainability and co-existence with the environment.”

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

Oncologist Guizhi Sun Joins JD Health’s TCM Center

Posted on Nov 20, 2020Sep 22, 2021 by Hui Zhang

by Hui Zhang

A nationally renowned Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) veteran, Guizhi Sun, joined JD Health’s TCM center on November 19^th to lead the tumor clinic team.

Dr. Sun has more than 60 years of experience in treating tumors by combining traditional Chinese and Western medicine. She has diagnosed and treated more than 800,000 people with middle- or late-stage tumors. She is the honorary chief researcher of the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, in addition to being a chief physician and professor.

Dr. Sun will lead her team to provide authoritative and professional online consultation services for patients through the platform of JD Health which will rely on its supply chain and technology advantages to help Dr. Sun’s team promote the TCM culture.

In addition to JD Health’s TCM center, the Nutrition & Healthcare Department, and the Nourishment & Health Preservation Department also signed an agreement with Dr. Sun to explore cooperation opportunities in TCM online consultations and medicine development, so as to benefit a wide range of patients.

The TCM center, which was unveiled by JD Health on June 7^th, has brought together a number of experts from TCM hospitals including Xuemin Shi, Runsan Xu, Sihua Gao, and Baogui Chen. Based on experts’ areas of focus, consultation desks covering nephropathy, respiration, andrology, oncology, endocrine, gynecology, cardio-cerebrovascular are available through the initiative.

In addition to online consultation, JD Health also launched an “online service platform for prepared slices of TCM” on September 2^nd to provide customers with a one-stop service experience that covers online medical consultation with TCM doctors, filling prescriptions, preparing herbal decoctions and delivering the medicines to customers’ homes.

“JD Health’s TCM center will continue to aim at reconstructing the TCM ecology with science and technology, and fulfill the mission of improving people’s health by cooperating with more and more Chinese medicine masters in the future,” said Ximu Li, director of JD Health’s TCM Center.

(zhanghui36@jd.com)

JD Holds Second Annual Agriculture Forum

Posted on Nov 20, 2020Nov 3, 2022 by Yuchuan Wang

by Yuchuan Wang

The second annual Divine Farmer Forum was held in JD’s headquarters in Beijing on November 16^th. At this forum, JD introduced the latest developments in its JD Farm project, which leverages advanced technologies such as IoT, blockchain and big data to advance the farming industry. Nearly 40 JD farms have been launched across the country so far.

Established in 2019, the Divine Farmer Forum is committed to exploring the development path of agriculture. Co-organized by Renmin University’s China Cooperative Research Institute, JD Farm and Flyteam, a Beijing based agricultural consulting company, over 400 representatives from China’s Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, municipal governments, agricultural associations, consulting companies and enterprises attended the forum.

JD showcased some examples done by JD Farm at the forum. In Linqu, Shandong province, the locally bred “Little Qiao honey peach” is tasty because it contains more sugar than average, but it easily cracks during the growing period and can be affected by low temperature during Springtime. In 2018, JD Farm began to equip the traditional peach farm with advanced technologies.

According to Yongjun Gao, general manager of “Little Qiao” family farm”, JD Farm applied an IoT digital agricultural system which is able to monitor water source, soil, climate and insect infestation. With real-time data, the system is able to forecast and provide alerts for natural hazards, suggest how fertilizer and pesticides should be applied, and improve the overall quality of fruits.

Little Qiao family farm is also able to sell its honey peaches across China online, thanks to JD’s e-commerce platform.

“Leveraging JD’s technology and e-commerce abilities, we bring produce directly from farms to consumers’ tables at the best price,” said Baozheng Long, vice president at JD.com. “The application of smart supply chain, IoT, blockchain, AI and big data will further drive the industry to develop and help farmers earn more.”

(yuchuan.wang@jd.com)

Photo Gallery: This Week at JD (November 16th – November 20th)

Posted on Nov 20, 2020Sep 30, 2021 by Yuchuan Wang

Lijun Xin (left), CEO of JD Health and Evelyn Cheng (right), CNBC correspondent

Lijun Xin, CEO of JD Health, joined CNBC’s annual East Tech West event in Nanshan, Guangzhou on November 18 and shared insights on the industry with Evelyn Cheng, CNBC’s Beijing correspondent. The event is a by invitation-only retreat and brings together people at the cutting edge of the technology industry and leading investors from around the world. Xin shared that the COVID-19 pandemic would advance development of China’s online health industry by around five to ten years.

The Green Stream Initiative, JD’s green supply chain program was awarded a 2020 Paulson Prize for Sustainability, on November 18 at a virtual streaming award ceremony. The Prize is jointly organized by The Paulson Institute and Tsinghua University, with an aim to identify and award sustainability-focused projects in China that provide innovative, scalable, and market-based solutions at the intersection of economics and the environment.

JD Logistics will upgrade 100 existing delivery stations across 10 cities in China to “JD Express”. The upgrade has begun since November and will further complete JD’s express service network and improve service level. The upgrade will transform the delivery stations from operation hubs to management hubs.

Yiming Wang, vice chairman of CCIEE and former vice president of DRC

JD Big Data Research Institute and Tsinghua China Data Center (CDC) jointly launched a report on digitalized and intelligent supply chain development trends in China this week. Yiming Wang, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE) and former vice president of the Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC) shares four suggestions for the future of supply chain development. Click here to learn more.

The second annual Divine Farmer Forum was held in JD’s headquarters in Beijing on November 16^th. Co-organized by Renmin University’s China cooperative research institute, JD Farm and Flyteam, a Beijing based agricultural consulting company, over 400 representatives from China’s Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, municipal governments, agricultural associations, consulting companies, enterprises and press attended the forum.

On November 15^th at 10:45 am, the No. 79366 train left Wujiashan (吴家山) station in Wuhan, conveying 600 tons of goods of JD.com, to North Changsha station. The train, nicknamed “Mobile Warehouse”, was loaded with 30 railway containers, jointly operated by JD Logistics (JDL) and China Railway Container. Equivalent to 20 17.5-meter transportation goods trailers, the train is expected to ease the pressure of limited road transportation resources and support goods allocation to meet the fast fulfillment demands of JD’s merchants.

In-depth Report: Message to Release from The 4th JD Discovery: Built to Last

Posted on Nov 20, 2020Oct 12, 2022 by Ling Cao

by Ling Cao

Ahead of the fourth JD Discovery (JDD) conference to be held next week, JD and Tsinghua University have jointly launched a report explaining three trends for the future of supply chain development in China: digitalization and intelligence, online-offline integration, and the strengthening of industry infrastructure.

During the upcoming JDD conference, which will gather industry experts from all areas of technology to discuss the most pertinent issues and developments in the industry, JD will unveil a new description of supply chain that is deeply in line with the trends outlined in the report.

JD Discovery conference online website

For the company’s future development, JD will leverage the digitalized and intelligent technology based on supply chain to connect and optimize processes covering production, circulation and service, in order to reduce cost and improve efficiency within the industries.

Nearly four years have passed since Richard Liu, Chairman and CEO of JD.com, emphasized technology during JD’s annual meeting in February 2017. “This is the time to put aside all of our achievements in the past, though the existing business model will support us to keep much higher growth rate compared with industry average in the next five to seven years— while in the next ten years, the improvement pace and the impact of technology to human beings will exceed the past 100 years,” Liu said during the meeting. “In the next 12 years, JD needs to leverage technology to break and rebuild business models.”

JD.com chairman and CEO Richard Liu speaks at 2017 JD annual meeting

Liu’s pointed direction has led JD’s innovation and operation. As a technology and service company with supply chain at its core, JD continues to expand its boundaries. Data from the latest third-quarter earnings showed that technology innovation is driving operation efficiency improvements. JD’s inventory turnover days shortened to 34.3 days, hitting the fastest turnover rate since its IPO. And net service revenues were RMB 22.8 billion yuan (US $3.4 billion), an increase of 42.7% from the third quarter of 2019.

The need to widen boundaries

Liu has come up with a ten-section operation theory. He divided the value chain for retail and consumer goods industries into ten sections, covering creativity, design, R&D, manufacturing, pricing, marketing, transaction, warehousing, delivery and post-sales. The first five sections belonged to brand owners; the last five belonged to retailers. In the past ten years, JD focused on the last five sections, originally starting from transaction, and gradually stretching to warehousing, delivery, post-sales and marketing.

As a result, JD’s nationwide logistics network has helped reduce the social logistics cost and helped JD to form foundation of supply chain infrastructure. JD’s logistics network has also proved its value amid the pandemic, playing a key role in ensuring uninterrupted delivery of essential and medical supplies in China. More importantly, JD has opened core supply chain capabilities to external partners, helping the industry to optimize cost, efficiency and experience.

JD Logistics trucks

Additionally, JD aims to stretch the supply chain from merchandise to other industries, including finance, healthcare and auto aftermarket— and further accessing the upstream sections from Liu’s ten-section theory: creativity, design, R&D, manufacturing and pricing.

Stretching to more industries

Since its establishment, JD has been building its strength in supply chain and technology, producing four unicorns to date, namely JD Logistics, JD Digits, JD Health and JD Industrial Technology.

As one of China’s leading online healthcare platforms rooted in JD.com, JD Health defines its strategy as medical services as the starting point and supply chain at the core, building a digital-driven healthcare management platform covering users’ full life circle and all scenarios.

Lijun Xin, JD Health CEO explained, “In the past, the business model of JD Health was more like a pharmaceutical e-commerce business, but if we can’t guide and manage the whole life cycle of users, we can’t become a real healthcare-service company.”

JD Health CEO Lijun Xin speaks at an offline event

Led by Xin, JD Health will open up the whole industry chain to integrate medical resources of all parties, and provide users with products and services that run through the whole life cycle and cover all health scenarios.

Xin shared, “For example, JD’s family doctors will know when any of your health indicators turn abnormal, even when you might not be aware, and they will contact you in a timely fashion to take action. When you use JD’s online platform, health consultations, medicines and other healthcare related services will be covered.”

Based on supply chain, JD Health has launched an omnichannel program for customers. Through nationwide collaboration with more than 200,000 offline pharmacies in over 200 cities so far, JD offers a 30-minute fast medicine delivery service for its online users. During the latest Singles Day Grand Promotion, sales from the program increased 21 times YoY and delivery services continued to improve, with one customer even receiving medicine in less than 10 minutes.

Talents enabling sustainable growth

Ahead of the Chinese spring festival earlier this year, Richard Liu sent an open letter to JD employees, with one of the key messages: “Talent is always the core among everything.”

At JD, the “Big Boss” is a key program to make the whole JD.com organization more agile, a characteristic that is often a key factor to decide whether a company can last long. The program empowers business divisions to make their own decisions, demonstrating greater trust in leaders across the company. JD aims to put decision-making power in the hands of those closest to the customer.

“The program is also premised on the idea that each business unit is a ’Lego building block’ that together with other units can more easily adapt, shifting and stacking to meet complex and ever-changing needs,” explained Rui Yu, CHO of JD.com.

JD Digits is also concentrating heavily on talent building. Leveraging digital technology, JD Digits is an example of how JD has extended its capabilities to help financial institutions, governments and other public institutions transform into a more digitalized business model. Within JDD, employees define themselves as the “chief growth officer (CGO)”, who each aim to help clients grow their business.

JD Digits employees portraits exhibition at JD headquarters

Ling Xu, vice president of JD Digits said: “It represents a notion. Growth is the target and we are all committed to helping clients achieve the target. Only when clients reach their goals, can we share the benefits. It’s a client-centered philosophy, to encourage the employees to put clients first.”

One of JDD’s employee said, “Previously, one client needed to communicate with several departments within JD and JDD for discussing different business programs, while now they can just contact JDD as a central communication point. In my role I will help them with internal communications, which makes the whole process more efficient.”

Shengqiang Chen, CEO of JD Digits shared his view of how to approach work: “First, you need to do the right thing, and second, you need to keep learning. Last, you need to keep curiosity to this world.” Chen’s philosophy has enabled a strong team which supports JDD’s long-term growth together.

Learn from the Titans

Global leading companies share similar business strategies. See Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft as examples, for whom market value has reached over 1 trillion US dollars, respectively, with stable growth rate. They all share multiple business models, stretching their access to transaction, service and technology, which is in line with JD’s mission: Powered by technology for a more productive and sustainable world.

As CEO Richard Liu shared, “You have to maintain unique advantages to make the company last for 100 years— it’s not to seek profits from upstream, but to provide value by optimizing cost and efficiency.”

JD’s efforts in the area of digitalized and intelligent technology will guide the direction for the company’s future, which will need higher technology abilities while creating more value for the society.

(ling.cao@jd.com)