JD Applies AR Technology in Beijing Metro’s O&M

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

JD Industrial Technology recently joined hands with Beijing MTR Corporation (BJMTR) to explore the use of intelligent technology in the metro’s operation and maintenance (O&M) for better personnel and cost management, further enhancing the rail transportation’s safety level, which already stands at over 99.99 percent.

During the JD Discovery Global Conference in Beijing on July 13, Xinming Shao, general manager of BJMTR, noted that digitally intelligent technology has enormous potential to be applied to a variety of metro use cases, especially in the O&M area to maximize safety performance,

Due to the complexity of the equipment, procedures, and circumstances along the rails, O&M personnel on the ground frequently find themselves unable to finish a problem investigation or make repairs by themselves. Now thanks to the assistance of AR glasses implanted with JD’s intelligent solutions that can activate image recognition and algorithms to rank potential root causes and give operation guidance, workers are in good hands to handle the troubleshooting. For more challenging situations, the AR glasses can even connect them with experts for video conferences to solve problems in a much easier way.

While this is going on, information from the inspection work collected from the AR glasses will be used in monitoring and analyzing the status of equipment, providing support for making more precise O&M and spare parts inventory plans.

Fengwei Ji, general manager of IoT products department of JD Industry, stressed that because of the highly complex nature of industrial production, it is essential for JD Industry to enter into real industrial scenarios and push the fusion of technologies and industries, so as to truly create value for businesses and beyond.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JD Property Makes UK Debut by Purchasing Warehouse

Posted on by Xiaoqian Han

by Xiaoqian Han

JD Property Group Corporation, a subsidiary of JD.com, a leading supply chain-based technology and service provider, that focuses on providing infrastructure asset management and solutions for integrated service platforms, has made its first UK transaction with the purchase of a 361,000 square feet warehouse in Milton Keynes from the client of Abrdn.

With a Gross Floor Area (GFA) of over 200 million square feet under management , JD Property Group Corporation’s modern warehouse network covers China, Southeast Asia, and Europe as of now. Collaborating with local partners, JD Property is developing logistics and industrial infrastructure to support enterprises expanding their businesses.

Milton Keynes Warehouse

Cen Shen, Head of European Business at JD Property Group Corporation, said: “This investment offers strong rental growth and value creation potential. It also demonstrates our execution capability, as we completed the transaction within 4 weeks even though it is our first investment in the UK. We will continue to invest in prime locations in the UK and Europe over the next few years.”

JD Property Group Corporation was advised by Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH) and Cromwell, while the vendor, a client of Abrdn, was represented by CBRE.

 

Notes:

JD Property Group Corporation is a subsidiary of JD.com, a Fortune Global 500 company and China’s leading e-commerce platform. JD Property provides integrated solutions for modernized high-specification warehouses, intelligent industrial parks, intelligent data centers, photovoltaic new energy parks and more for partners from various industries. It leverages a broad range of logistics funds with world-leading capital partners, contributing to a fund platform with over 20 billion RMB in assets under management.

 

(hanxiaoqian3@jd.com)

JD.com Supports FLUKE Double Production against COVID impacts in China

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

Despite COVID disruptions in the supply chain in the first half of the year, the Shi Fu (世福) factory of FLUKE, the world leader in the manufacturing, distribution, and service of electronic test tools and software, based in Wuhu of Anhui province in China, said its production plan this June doubled that of May and was even higher than the same period last year.

FLUKE’s cooperation with JD Industrial Supply has enabled its production surge, in which JD helped its Shi Fu factory to leverage online channels to catch the sales opportunities while the offline market remains lukewarm due to the resurgence of COVID-19.

“JD Industrial Supply has strong client resources such as Global 500 companies, lighthouse factories, China’s top 100 machinery enterprises, and more, which are precisely FLUKE’s target clients,” said a spokesperson of FLUKE. “Our sales to big Chinese enterprises and KA customers via online channels have increased significantly since we collaborated with JD.”

Through JD Industrial Supply, products are presented via multiple channels, and as a result, FLUKE is able to engage with big enterprises from energy, manufacturing, engineering building, and other industrial sectors that are active on JD Industrial Procurement Management platform (京东工采), and also widely interact with small and medium-sized enterprises on JD MRO (京东工品购). JD Industrial Supply is a valuable partner to help Fluke “find different baskets to put the eggs in”.

The supply chain of Shi Fu factory was affected by the uncertainties caused by the pandemic this April. “We have adopted various countermeasures to minimize the COVID impact. In view of the inflow of goods from our suppliers, the industrial chain is recovering; despite the recovery, the high sensitivity to the supply chain remains part of our work habit,” said Ming Wang, operation manager of Shi Fu factory.

Wang noted that instead of only stocking materials on demand for the purposes of cost efficiency and lean production, as the factory used to do, it is more common now to have alternative suppliers’ resources at hand to enhance the supply chain resilience.

During this year’s JD 618 Grand Promotion, enterprises from more than 70 industrial segments made procurement orders via JD Industrial Supply, as the whole industry rethinks the value of the supply chain and accelerates their pace of digital transformation to be more agile in meeting production demand in the face of uncertainty.

The purchase of industrial instruments on JD Industrial Supply including FLUKE increased 608 percent compared with the same period last year during the shopping festival.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JD Super Releases “2022 Mineral Water Consumption Trend Report”

Posted on by Mengyang He

by Mengyang He

JD Super, JD.com’s online supermarket business, released the “2022 Mineral Water Consumption Trend Report” on July 20, showing signs of mineral water’s rise in volume in the market.

With a market volume of RMB 200 billion yuan, China’s bottled water industry has been dominated by two key players, mineral water and spring water. According to the report, although spring water outperformed mineral water in transaction volume by 15 percent last year, mineral water recorded a higher growth rate by 8 percent compared with spring water, indicating a greater market potential.

Another trend is about the health aspect. As consumers have started to increasingly care about their health and well-being, mineral water that contains abundant microelements which supposed to be good to people’s health have become their first pick.

The report also reveals that the origin of mineral water has become a critical factor in consumers’ decision-making process, and therefore, more brands have started labelling the origin on the product.

Regarding the price, a mineral water product priced at above RMB 60 yuan per case (24 bottles) was the most popular one, whereas the hottest pick for spring water was in the range from RMB 31 to 40 yuan per case.

From the geographical aspect, consumers from Beijing, Guangdong province, and Shanghai contributed to the most sales of mineral water, accounting for 24 percent, 15 percent, and 14 percent, respectively.

The report also shows that consumers from different regions had their favorite brands. For example, consumers from Beijing preferred Nongfu Spring, those from Guangdong province favored Evergrande Spring, and Shanghai consumers were fond of the classic French brand Evian.

 

(hemengyang5@jd.com)

International Students Visit JD Hydroponic Plant Factory

Posted on by Mengyang He

by Mengyang He

Thirteen students from Botswana, India, Mongolia, and Tanzania among others enrolled in China Agricultural University, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing International Studies University and more visited JD.com’s hydroponic plant factory in Beijing on July 18, as part of their summer field research under the theme “Exploration on the Path of Industrial Prosperity Promoting Rural Revitalization.”

As JD Plant Factory is China’s largest plant factory using Japanese technology that combines sunlight and artificial light, the students learned about how agricultural technology is applied in vegetable farming during the visit.

Zhongsheng Wu, general manager of JD Plant Factory, said, “Although all the vegetables at JD Plant Factory are cultivated with the hydroponic technology, the overall water consumption is remarkably low. Only 500ml of water is required during the entire lifecycle from seed to vegetable, and this method saves more than 90 percent of water compared with conventional cultivation.”

The environmental indicators such as temperature, humidity, light, and carbon dioxide concentration in the nursery room are all controlled by computer, which creates a high-quality growth environment for hydroponic vegetables. The water purification equipment can also prevent water pollution, and vegetables can thrive without pesticides.

With the help of cutting-edge technology, JD Plant Factory is able to produce and harvest vegetables all year round, with an annual output of 300 tons. Therefore, it can control costs from the supply side, and provide consumers with safe and healthy products.

“I am fascinated by the hydroponic technology applied in JD Plant Factory, and wish to bring it back to my home country,” noted Suleyman, a Tanzanian student from Beijing Forestry University.

 

(hemengyang5@jd.com)

JD Joins Hands with Intel to Further Enhance Digital Intelligence

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

JD Cloud announced the launch of a virtualization engine, Jing Gang 2.0 (京刚2.0), during its annual cloud summit last week, among an array of other tech products to better unleash the capabilities of a digitally intelligent supply chain. Behind the scenes is JD’s resolution of pushing digital intelligence and its seamless collaboration with partners such as Intel, the world’s leading chipmaker, to implement the technologies into practice.

As the industry-leading software and hardware integrated virtualization engine, Jing Gang 2.0 offloads the virtualization to a dedicated hardware for acceleration, boosting storage performance by 10 times when integrated with the unified storage platform Yun Hai (云海, meaning “Cloud Sea”).

Supporting the prime performance of Jing Gang 2.0 is the bare metal cloud host jointly developed by JD and Intel. Based on Intel FPGA and Xeon processors, JD Cloud has developed its own smartNIC to secure a safe and efficient computing environment. Intel Memory Failure Prediction and recovery system, which was collaboratively developed and deployed by both companies, has also improved the reliability and stability of the cloud infrastructure by nearly 40 percent.

Furthermore, the two parties released an overall solution of cold-plate liquid cooling for both the data center level and microprocessor level at the Cloud Summit, promoting the development of the environment and liquid cooling technology with a long-term pursuit of more sustainable green datacenters.

JD Cloud is now working with Intel to further establish a secure and reliable computing environment based on Intel Software Guard Extensions of the third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processor.

“Together with our partners, we are driving the application of intelligent technologies to deepen the digital transformation in a wide range of professions and industries,” said Yali Liang, Intel’s vice president in the Sales, Marketing and Communications Group, in her speech at the summit.

As strategic partners, Intel and JD have been working together for 13 years on retail, datacenter businesses and more. The two sides have carried out comprehensive and in-depth cooperation around cloud computing, artificial intelligence, green and low-carbon datacenters and other areas, aiming at driving innovations and leveraging cloud capabilities to benefit businesses all over the world.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)

Six Things JD.com Has Done That Make Jiangsu’s Agriculture Smarter

Posted on by Vivian Yang

by Vivian Yang

JD Technology (JDT) was awarded Jiangsu province’s “Champion Company for Smart Agriculture 2022” at the Jiangsu Digital Village Development Conference on July 6th. Under a comprehensive partnership, JD.com has made big strides in the past year in six main areas to support the rural revitalization of the coastal province of China:

First, making Suqian’s hairy crabs a new signature product of Jiangsu. Through collaboration with the agriculture and rural bureau of Suqian, a city of Jiangsu province, JD supported local farmers on large-scale cooperative production, standardized breeding and quality control systems and omni-channel marketing that helped Internet traffic grow to millions for stores selling the products. As a result, sales of Suqian hairy crabs in 2021 increased 173 times, and during the first ten minutes of this year’s JD618 Grand Promotion, sales of the crabs rose 1150 percent year on year.

Second, promoting sales of local specialty peaches. From scientific farm management, standardized fruits sorting, fresh delivery process to marketing channels, JD has leveraged its know-how in e-commerce and technologies to deeply participate in the digital upgrading of the production and sales of the peaches from Yangshan town under Wuxi city of Jiangsu. Moreover, a JD warehouse was built on site to enhance delivery efficiency across the country. According to Yangshan peach association’s sales data, in 2021, 65 percent of local peach yield was sold through JD.com, making the platform the largest sales channel, and the percentage is expected to reach 73 percent in 2022.

Third, co-creating national demonstration projects on promoting e-commerce in villages in Rudong and Siyang counties. Based on JD Cloud’s technologies, a network of e-commerce public service centers and stations have been built in the two counties which offer a variety of e-commerce services including skill training for individual farmers and companies, brand promotion support, produce tracing systems, and more.

Fourth, giving birth to the new e-commerce produce brand “Jiu Si Xian”. In Chinese, the brand’s pronunciation sounds similar to “fresh indeed” and indicates its origin of Siyang county. Thanks to the e-commerce public service center created by JDT in Siyang as well as JD Logistics’ last-mile delivery services, the brand is able to provide fresh local agricultural products to nationwide customers quickly via e-commerce.

Fifth, the founding of JD’s first demonstration park for agricultural technologies. Situated in Suyu district of Suqian city and covering an area of about 500,000 km², the demonstration park is equipped with three smart systems including the greenhouse environment monitoring, linkage control and the big data center; and contains six functional areas including smart agricultural production, high-tech seedling breeding, processing logistics and delivery, IoT demonstration, science and innovation training center, and sightseeing and leisure fruit-picking. It is estimated that the park will support more than 30 cooperatives and family farms in the vicinity, driving up the production of fruits and vegetables from over 333,000 km², thus the income growth of the households.

Sixth, offering e-commerce training courses to cultivate the new generation of farmers. By leveraging JD’s training resources from JD E-Commerce Industry College in the areas of cross-border e-commerce, new media operation, livestreaming, big data marketing and more， Jiangsu College of Finance & Accounting offered e-commerce training to more than 3,000 students in the past year and the courses will continue to expand in hopes of fostering more talents that can use modern e-commerce skills to promote agricultural development of their hometowns.

Wang Zhengming, vice president of JDT’s intelligent cities business group, pointed out that the company’s technological solution for villages will focus on the building of an intelligent operating system, a new type of infrastructure based on which JDT will continue to develop solutions for the upgrading of the agricultural industry, the modernization of village governance and supporting digitally smart lives for the farmers.

 

(vivian.yang@jd.com)

JD Recognized with China’s AI Technology Accolade

Posted on by Doris Liu

by Doris Liu

JD.com, in hand with Tianjin University, received the second-class Technology Progress Award The Wu Wenjun AI Science and Technology Awards, which is the most prestigious awards in this field in China, for their work on key intelligent technology that matches products to customers and its application in marketing. The announcement was made on July 16.

This Award is named after the renowned Chinese distinguished mathematician and AI pioneer, Wu Wenjun, who was also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and were initiated by the only association at the national level officially recognized in the field of intelligent science and technology, the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI).

JD has been committed to the research of the core basic technology of digital intelligence. Yongjun Bao, Vice President of JD.com, noted that JD had made a breakthrough in intelligently matching products to customers with accuracy, in-depth user insight and thorough understanding of products, which not only satisfies the personalized and differentiated consumption needs, but has also brought significant economic and social benefits.

In particular, the project proposed three key technologies around user and product attributes and matching recommendations: Multi-level user portrait modeling, product cross modeling across different modalities, and accurate matching of products to people. During the project period, the technical team has published 42 high-level papers and obtained 25 national invention patents. The related contents were cited by Google Scholar more than 4,000 times and won more than 40 awards, including the ADMEN International Awards.

The project has been tested in practice in JD’s complex retail scenarios, helping JD’s intelligent marketing platform grow by more than 200 percent between 2018-2020 by providing users with accurate product recommendations. Furthermore, marketing tools built based on the technology have served for more than 100,000 domestic and foreign merchants to reduce their costs and improve user experience with refined and efficient marketing models.

Since the comprehensive transformation to technology development in 2017, JD has invested nearly RMB 80 billion yuan in basic science and technology R&D. To date, JD’s technological achievements have expanded across many application scenarios such as intelligent retail, intelligent supply chain, logistics and warehousing, smart cities, the industrial Internet as well as the exploration of frontier fields such as credible artificial intelligence, super deep learning, quantum machine learning and more. With JD Cloud as the core brand for technology, JD will continue to help digital transformation and upgrading of partners with lower costs and higher efficiency.

 

(liujun215@jd.com)