Auto & Transportation

Recently, Cainiao has built the largest automated warehousing system in Southeast Asia for the leading express delivery company in Thailand, Lightning, helping the company to quickly establish a differentiated competitiveness in the field of logistics and warehousing.

Thailand has a consumer population of nearly 70 million and a per capita GDP of more than 7,000 US dollars. It is an important market for e-commerce in Southeast Asia. In the local area, e-commerce platforms represented by Lazada and Shopee have developed rapidly. Facebook's social e-commerce and Tiktok's live-streaming e-commerce have also maintained rapid growth.

However, behind the skyrocketing e-commerce transaction volume is an inefficient logistics system, and the warehousing link has become an important shortcoming.

"The overall level of logistics in Thailand, especially e-commerce logistics, is about 5 to 10 years behind that of China. Only some large logistics companies use some semi-automated warehousing systems, and most small and medium-sized warehouses still use manual bookkeeping, A management model without a system.” said Han Lei, warehousing manager of the Thai express company Lightning Da.

If you catch up with the big promotion, Chinese consumers can receive the goods in minutes as fast as possible, while Thai consumers may often have to wait a week or even longer to receive the goods.

As the local express company with the largest order volume, Lightning has more than 2,000 outlets in Thailand, delivering more than 2 million orders every day, and its main business covers most countries in Southeast Asia.

"Many customers hope that in addition to providing express services, we can also help them solve warehousing problems." According to Di Weijie, co-founder and COO of Lightning Da, warehousing automation can improve logistics efficiency while also containing a huge market. . According to the Logistics IQ report, the compound annual growth rate of the global warehouse automation market scale will reach 11.7% from 2019 to 2025, and the global warehouse automation market will reach $27 billion in 2025. In the Thai logistics industry with a very low degree of automation, this will be a visible blue ocean.

At the beginning of 2021, Lightning Da began to look for partners for automation transformation in China. The company believes that China needs to process hundreds of millions of parcels every day. Such experience, model and technical level are very suitable for helping logistics companies in Southeast Asia to improve their capabilities.

Lightning Da hopes to learn from China's more advanced technologies, such as the automated picking of robots in AGV warehouses, and the construction of fast warehousing and delivery capabilities. To this end, Lightning Da has put forward requirements for partners: the technology should be advanced and reliable, and the cost should be low enough. Di Weijie said: "The profit of the logistics business is actually very thin. If the cost of the solution is not low enough, it will cause a very heavy burden."

In April of that year, Cainiao's automation solution won the bidding. "Cainiao's plan can't be perfect in every point, but in terms of overall balance, we think it is the best." Di Weijie said.

It is understood that Cainiao has applied flexible automation technology in warehouse planning and design, so that the production capacity of the warehouse can be adjusted according to the actual order volume to meet the needs of future business development and expansion. At present, the warehouse can maintain a high output of 6,000 orders per day, and the daily processing capacity will be quickly increased to 20,000 orders during the big promotion.

In the past, for every major promotion, Lightning Da needed to temporarily deploy hundreds of outsourced workers one month in advance to deal with the skyrocketing order volume. This year's Double 11, for the first time, Lightning Da did not add more workers to the warehouse, but just added a few more machines.

"There are fewer warehouse workers, management costs are also reduced, and efficiency is improved," said Han Lei, warehouse manager. "Automation has tripled the warehouse's production capacity."

"Let a new technology be put into application quickly and generate returns, this is the core value that Cainiao brings to Lightning." Ding Hongwei, general manager of Cainiao Logistics Technology Division, believes that the establishment of an automated warehousing system can help Lightning in Southeast Asia. The field of warehousing and logistics has rapidly established differentiated competitiveness, giving it a first-mover advantage.

In the past 8 years, Cainiao's logistics technology has been accompanied by its own globalization process, and has been implemented and generated value in eHubs, overseas warehouses, distribution centers, terminal distribution networks and other scenarios around the world. Ding Hongwei said: "We hope to gradually export our understanding of e-commerce logistics and technology to overseas partners. We will always firmly promote technology to go overseas, and Southeast Asia and Europe will be the key directions for the next step."