Optimization and development trend of warehousing industry
Author: Ethan updated on April 7, 2007.
Abstract: Warehousing business is an important part of modern logistics, which plays a vital role in the logistics system and is the focus of manufacturers' research and planning. Efficient and reasonable warehousing can help manufacturers to speed up the circulation of materials, reduce costs, ensure the smooth progress of production and realize effective control and management of resources. Therefore, the optimization strategy of warehousing is put forward. The development of warehousing has gone through different historical periods and stages, from the initial manual warehousing to the current intelligent warehousing. With the support of various high technologies, the storage efficiency has been greatly improved. It is a trend to realize the flexibility of warehousing system and realize the automation of logistics and warehousing by using flexible transmission equipment and logistics lines.
Keywords: warehousing optimization warehousing automation warehousing business modern logistics
The development process of warehousing includes: manual warehousing and mechanized warehousing; Automatic storage stage; Intelligent storage stage.
Manual and mechanized storage stage: at this stage, the transportation, storage, management and control of materials are mainly realized by manual and auxiliary machinery. Materials can be moved and transported by various conveyor belts, industrial transport vehicles, robots, cranes, stackers and elevators, stored by shelf pallets and movable shelves, operated by manual mechanical access devices, and operated by control devices such as limit switches, screw mechanical brakes and mechanical monitors. Mechanization meets people's requirements for speed, accuracy, height, weight, repeated access and handling, and its timeliness and intuition are obvious advantages.
Automatic warehousing stage: Automation technology has played an important role in promoting warehousing technology and development. Since the late 1950s, automatic guided vehicles (AVG), automatic shelves, automatic access robots, automatic identification and automatic sorting systems have been developed and adopted. In the 1970s, the handling equipment such as rotating shelves, moving shelves and roadway stackers all joined the ranks of automatic control, but they were only partially automated and applied independently, and were called "automation islands".
With the development of computer technology, the focus of work has shifted to the control and management of materials, requiring real-time, coordination and integration. The communication among computers, data acquisition points, mechanical equipment controllers and between them and the main computer can summarize information in time. The warehouse computer can record the ordering and arrival time in time and display the inventory. Planners can make supply decisions conveniently, and managers can grasp the supply and demand situation at any time.
The application of information technology has become an important pillar of warehousing technology. By the end of 1970s, automation technology was more and more used in production and sales. "Automation island" needs integration, so the concept of "integrated system" is formed. In the integrated system, the organic cooperation of the whole system makes the overall benefit and production adaptability greatly exceed the sum of the independent benefits of each part. As the material storage center of CIMS (Computer Integrated Manufacturing System), integrated warehouse technology has attracted people's attention, which includes people, equipment and control system. Intelligent warehousing stage: on the basis of automatic warehousing, continue to study, realize the integration with other information decision-making systems, and develop towards intelligent and fuzzy control. Artificial intelligence promotes the development of warehousing technology, that is, intelligent warehousing. Now the intelligent warehousing technology is still in the primary development stage, and the intellectualization of warehousing technology will have broad application prospects in the 2 1 century. In the early 1970s, China began to study the three-dimensional warehouse of tunnel stacker. 1980, the first automated warehouse in China, developed by Beijing Institute of Machinery Industry Automation and other units, was put into operation in Beijing Automobile Factory. Since then, the three-dimensional warehouse has developed rapidly in China.
According to incomplete statistics, there are about 300 three-dimensional warehouses built in China at present, including more than 50 fully automatic three-dimensional warehouses, including 8 large-scale three-dimensional warehouses with a height exceeding 12 meters. These automated warehouses are mainly concentrated in traditional industries such as tobacco, medicine and health products, food, communication and information, furniture manufacturing and machinery manufacturing. On this basis, the research on warehouse in China is also developing in the direction of intelligence, but at present our country is still in the stage of popularization and application of automated warehouse.
Advantages and disadvantages of automated warehousing
Advantages of automated warehousing
Automated warehouse is an important part of modern warehouse. The height of multi-storey elevated warehouse system can reach more than 30 meters, and different types of elevated warehouses can be set up according to needs: high-rise (12m or more), middle-rise (5-12m) and low-rise (5m or less). This can save nearly 70% of the floor space compared with liquidation.
Realize mechanization and automation, so as to improve the management level of the warehouse. The automatic three-dimensional warehouse system consists of shelves, stackers, storage conveyors, automatic control systems and management information systems. It can automatically complete the storage and withdrawal of goods according to instructions, and automatically manage the goods in the warehouse, making the handling and storage of materials more reasonable. Due to the adoption of shelf storage and computer management, the principle of first-in first-out and new storage can be easily realized to prevent the natural aging, deterioration and rust of goods.
Reduce the dependence on labor demand, especially the cost of human resources in special storage environment. Due to the adoption of automation technology, automatic storage can meet the needs of special occasions such as darkness, toxicity and low temperature.
Inherent disadvantages of automated warehousing
The main body of automated warehouse with large investment and long construction period is composed of automated warehouse. The basic components of an automated warehouse include buildings, shelves, tally areas, management areas, stacking machinery, supporting machinery, related management systems and information systems. These hardware and software require high capital investment and installation and construction costs. Automated warehouse construction projects should be evaluated and designed, including necessity evaluation, technical evaluation, system development and sensitivity analysis. This requires an analysis of factors such as throughput, storage capacity and the category of goods ordered in the past and future 3-5 years, as well as the performance evaluation and selection of equipment, all of which require a long time period and a lot of manpower, material resources and time investment.
When the automated warehouse is completed according to the plan, the type of warehouse, the throughput of materials and the capacity of the warehouse are fixed. At this time, if external factors suddenly change, the warehouse does not have strong adaptability and change ability, that is, it lacks flexibility.
Optimization Strategy of China's Warehouse Industry
The Present Situation of Storage Industry in China
At present, the main problems existing in the use of automated warehouses in China are low utilization rate, unclear effect, uncertain scale and outstanding advantages, which make many warehouse resources idle, especially some small-batch and single-product production enterprises realize warehouse automation, and the contradiction between idle facilities and equipment resources and repeated configuration is prominent. The main reasons are as follows:
Due to the lack of adequate investigation and analysis of warehouse construction and planning, there are major decision-making problems in the design and planning of automated warehouses before construction. For the sake of automation, the necessity of automation was not studied and analyzed. Only after the construction was completed did it be found that the requirements for automation were very low and the utilization rate was very small.
I don't know enough about improving the mechanization and automation of warehouse operations, I don't want to use the equipped equipment, I don't have confidence in the new automatic warehouse, and I don't put the automatic warehouse in an important position, so I give up the research and use of the automatic warehouse ideologically.
Due to the change of external factors and situation, the change of receiving and dispatching tasks, the change of workload and the change of goods types, the warehouse equipment and management system have not changed and upgraded, and the original market has been lost for a long time, and the warehouse is in an idle state.
The quality of personnel can not keep up, the training of mechanical operators and maintenance personnel is not paid enough attention, and the lack of operation and maintenance personnel makes the existing equipment unable to play its due role. In the design of the new warehouse, the subsequent maintenance and development are not considered, which limits the use of equipment and the improvement of automation level. After installation, some systems are damaged, and accessories and after-sales service can't keep up, so maintenance is very difficult.
Positive response measures
As the above problems directly lead to the low frequency of use of automated warehouses and a large number of idle resources, we should actively take countermeasures to change the existing situation.
Revitalizing assets, making full use of existing equipment to develop idle resources, revitalizing the stock of assets and improving the utilization rate of equipment are important measures to improve economic benefits in the process of changing the operating mechanism of logistics industry. Fully put idle resources into the open market, break the boundaries between industries and administrative regions, and let the market allocate resources effectively and reasonably. Introduce relevant policies, encourage professional institutions to operate idle equipment, expand equipment information exchange channels, and improve information service means. Transfer, sell, lease and replace idle equipment with compensation through normal channels.
Try to enjoy resources and prevent unnecessary waste of resources. Study and popularize modern logistics management and operation mode, combine production process with automated warehouse technology, and improve internal logistics speed. Use network technology to develop e-commerce, realize the modernization of logistics means and organization networking, make full use of the resources of external related industries and enterprises, truly realize the scale of logistics operation, resource sharing and risk sharing, build and use automated warehouses with manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, and become the backup of stockists, distributors, transporters, forwarders, distribution processing bases and their own logistics bases. Provide third-party logistics services for the society and form a complete logistics distribution system. Complete the logistics tasks in any region (including international) in the shortest time, make the logistics cost reasonable, make horizontal alliances as far as possible, open their respective logistics resources and increase market share.
Improve the quality of employees in an all-round way and improve the management mechanism of automated warehouses. To realize the efficient use of logistics equipment, it is necessary to have a suitable logistics environment and scientific management, which requires high-quality talents. In the absence of practical experience at present, we can take the way of "going out, please come in" to study in developed countries, invite professionals or university teachers to introduce experience, impart knowledge and hold study classes. Or recruit logistics professionals from technical colleges to solve the shortage of operators and maintenance personnel as soon as possible. Do a good job of digestion and absorption, so that it can be localized as soon as possible to meet market demand.
Automatic warehouse is a key unit in material circulation and plays an important role. It has become inevitable in developed countries to build an automated warehouse as soon as it is built. China's economy has gradually integrated into the world economy and become a global processing base. However, at present, the overall situation of China's automated three-dimensional library market is that supply exceeds demand, and the general profit is low. Automatic three-dimensional library is the second-line or third-line equipment needed by processing enterprises, which contains huge business opportunities in the long run.
With the expansion of processing enterprises and the enhancement of investors' confidence, automatic three-dimensional library will be widely used.
Development trend of warehousing industry
With the development of modern industrial production, flexible manufacturing system, computer integrated manufacturing system and factory automation put forward higher requirements for automatic warehousing. Handling and warehousing technology should have more reliable and real-time information, and the logistics in factories and warehouses must be accompanied by parallel information flow.
Radio frequency data communication, bar code technology, scanning technology and data acquisition are more and more applied to transportation equipment such as warehouse stackers, automatic guided vehicles and conveyor belts. As a flexible logistics tool, mobile robots also play an increasingly important role in flexible production, storage and product delivery. Realizing the flexibility of the system and adopting flexible transmission equipment and logistics lines is the trend to realize logistics warehousing automation.
The development of artificial intelligence technology will promote the development of automated warehouse technology to a higher stage, that is, intelligent automation. In the intelligent automatic logistics stage, after the production plan is made, the material and manpower requirements are automatically generated, the inventory and purchase orders are checked, and the logistics is planned and completed. If there are not enough materials to meet the production requirements, the system will automatically suggest modifying the plan to produce the same product. This system integrates artificial intelligence into the logistics system.
At present, the basic principle of intelligent warehousing system has been gradually realized in some practical logistics systems. It can be predicted that intelligent warehousing technology will have a broad application prospect in 2 1 century.