AsiaIndustrial NetNews: News on March 24, Shanghai Kuicang Intelligent WarehousingrobotThe company announced the completion of the B round of financing, with Cainiao as the lead investor and Softbank as the investment, with a total capital of 125 million yuan, plus debt financing, this round of financing amounted to nearly 200 million yuan.
Kuicang previously completed 10 million yuan in angel round financing in August 2014; in October 2015, it completed 30 million yuan in Series A financing.
Yang Wei, CEO of Kuaicang, told Yiou that after this round of financing, the funds will be mainly used for the company’s development: 1. Enhance R&D capabilities, in terms of software and hardware; 2. Build production centers; 3. Expand business models (previously tried Generation operation, financial leasing and other models, the effect is good, will continue to explore).
Kuicang was established in March 2014, focusing on order fulfillment systems in warehouses. The company currently has a R&D team of more than 100 people, accounting for 80% of the total, mainly from Fuller, Suning, JD.com, and Wisdom.
According to Yang Wei, up to now, Kuaichang has sold more than 400 robots, and it has deployed hundreds of robots in the single warehouse of Vipshop. , Customers include third-party logistics companies, supply chain companies, express delivery companies, e-commerce, retailers, etc., with an hourly throughput of about 3,000 pieces.
Developed by Kuaicang TechnologyautomationThe order fulfillment system is based on the organic combination of automatic transportation robots, scheduling software, resource management software, etc., and has the ability to continuously learn and optimize performance. In practical application, it has the following characteristics: first, high flexibility and strong adaptability; second, low threshold for the system to start; third, strong independent decision-making ability.
According to Kuaicang data analysis, the labor efficiency of sorting personnel in traditional warehouses to process orders is about 150 orders per day. After using Kuaicang intelligent storage robots, the robots transport the shelves to the operator, avoiding the need for personnel in the shelf area. The internal picking time greatly improves the picking efficiency, and the order processing capacity can be increased to 350 orders/day. In addition, the robot can run non-stop – 7*24 hours of continuous work, the workload of the robot is equivalent to 3-4 times, and the error rate is only 0.5/10,000, which is far lower than traditional manual operations.
In this interview, Yang Wei revealed that Kuaicang does not formulate solutions according to the surface needs of customers, but taps the deep-level needs of customers and uses small modularization to make the system more flexible. At the same time, Kuaicang is also doing it himself, but not in the name of Kuaicang, but as a franchisee of Best Century. Why do you do this? Yang Wei said: “In the end, I don’t want to make money from this operation, I still sell it. equipment, selling solutions, or providing information services in the entire warehouse.”
Yang Wei believes that the main advantages of Kuaicang are reflected in technology research and development and industry accumulation. Technology research and development is a very long chain, which requires comprehensive development and multi-department collaboration; Kuicang has been grinding in the industry for 3 years and has accumulated certain experience; at the same time, Kuicang’s shareholder composition also has certain advantages, and Cainiao represents the e-commerce platform , Best Logistics represents the supply chain, mainly the 3PL alliance, has many warehouses in the country, and the investment institution Softbank has a better understanding of the industry, and can provide support in terms of capital and industry.
Yang Wei feels that artificial intelligence has several parts in warehouse operations:
The first solution that can be done by many people, because the data processing ability of the machine is far greater than that of the human brain, at least the processing ability of structured data is very strong;
The second one can help us do a lot of repetitive work and can change human operations;
The third one can make a lot of recommendations for warehouse operations in a timely manner, such as pre-packaging of products, abnormal changes in sales, changes in orders based on seasonal changes, and so on.
The development of artificial intelligence in the field of logistics has begun to show effects, especially in the field of information flow. Later, under the guidance of informatization, dataization, and industry standardization, the development of artificial intelligence in the field of logistics will be “promising” and its value will become more and more. The bigger, Yang Wei said: “In this regard, quantitative change and qualitative change are carried out at the same time, and it will not take long for the industry to undergo qualitative change. Although intelligent warehousing has experienced the budding period of the previous few years and the germination period of 2016-2017, but For the future, opportunities and challenges still coexist, and there is a lot of room for market development.”
And also for today, WMS is already the infrastructure in the warehouse, just like the rack and warehouse space, it is already the infrastructure. In the next five years, Kuaicang hopes that warehouse robots will become the infrastructure of the sorting warehouse. As long as the sorting warehouse is used, there must be warehouse robots. The entire system scheduling of warehouse robots is a highly intelligent and complex. Based on this feature, it can be pulled to the periphery, upstream and downstream.
This time Kuaicang received the investment from Cainiao, which is also considered in this regard. Cainiao has rich resources in e-commerce and small and medium-sized 3PLs, which can help its development to a certain extent. Yang Wei revealed that a project will be launched at the end of April, and it will be officially released in mid-May.
The future of the market is bright, but the road is tortuous. As Yang Wei said in the interview, “opportunities and challenges coexist”, and it is necessary for companies to work together to cultivate the market. The situation of “kill each other” is also the performance of maximizing benefits, but everything is possible, and we look forward to the future development of intelligent warehousing. Technology changes logistics.
The author of this article, Su Lei, the columnist of Yiou; WeChat: sulei9678 (please indicate “name-company-position” when adding it for remarks); please indicate the author’s name and “source: Yiou” for reprinting; the content of the article is the author’s personal opinion , does not mean that Yiou agrees or supports the views.