In recent years, Chinese cold chain logistics industry has developed rapidly, the demand for cold chain intelligent warehousing has continued to increase. More and more companies and government platforms have built AS/RS warehouses. By investing in automated equipment such as stackers and shuttles, the integrated system exerts its maximum effect, realizes the rapid access of cold chain goods and efficient & precise access control, improves the efficiency of enterprise, realizes a high degree of informatization, saves manpower and costs, and improves safety.

Relying on the deep background and rich experience in the automation and intelligence filed and the cold chain industry, NANJING INFORM STORAGE EQUIPMENT (GROUP) CO.,LTD invested and constructed a cold storage project in Hangzhou Development Zone. Now the project is in operation and INFORM is responsible for cold chain operation services. The project includes cold storage, fresh-keeping storage, constant temperature storage, ordinary bonded storage and supporting facilities. It adopts fully-automated AS/RS equipment, providing intelligent cold chain warehousing and operations applicable to one-stop imported food logistics centers for refrigeration, cold storage logistics, processing, and distribution.

This project is located in the cross-border e-commerce park of Hangzhou Economic Development Zone, serving the needs of surrounding imported fresh, meat and aquatic products. The project integrates the Internet of Things, intelligence, informatization and automation. The total investment of the project is about 300 million RMB. The total construction scale is a low-temperature warehouse with a storage capacity of 12,000 tons and a cold storage warehouse with 8,000 tons. It covers an area of 30846.82 square meters, a floor area ratio of 1.85, and a building area of 38,000 square meters. It has one-stop logistics service functions such as quarantine, inspection, bonded, frozen, refrigerated storage, processing and distribution, which supports the inspection of 660 tons of goods and cold storage with nearly 12,000 tons at the same time, and meet the annual import meat business volume of 144,000 tons.

This project is divided into three cold storages and one room temperature storage:

The three cold storages have a total planning of 16,422 cargo spaces, by 10 lanes, 7 stackers (including 2 track-changing double-deep stackers), 4 two way radio shuttles, and conveying equipment, to realize automated inbound and outbound. The combined operation efficiency of the three warehouses exceeds 180 pallets/hour (in + out)

Room temperature warehouse: The general plan is 8138 cargo spaces, by 4 lanes, 4 stackers and conveying equipment, to realize automated inbound and outbound. The combined operation efficiency is 156 pallets/hour (in + out)

Pallet labels are all barcoded for information management, and external dimension detection and weighing are provided before storage to ensure safe inbound.

The automated dense warehouse of stacker + shuttle car utilizes the characteristics of stacker crane running in front&back and up&down directions of main lane, and shuttle car running in sub-lane, the two equipment dispatched and coordinated through WCS software, to complete the picking and placing of goods.

Main working principle:

1. Inbound: After automated palletizing, pallets are sent to the storage area of AS/RS through conveyor line. Then stacker takes pallet and places it at the end of racking by WMS software. Then pallet is transported by radio shuttle to the other end of racking. The same batch of products are stored in the same lane.

2. Outbound: Radio shuttle moves pallet to the end of sub-lane, then stacker picks up the pallet, places it on the outbound conveyor line, then It is taken away by forklift or other handling equipment for delivery.

 Project Benefits

With the core of high efficiency, informatization, traceability and automation, the project meets the future market demand of fast inspection and quarantine, fast entry and exit, bonded storage, fast sorting and traceability of imported fresh, meat, and aquatic products. Apply RFID technology to perceive positioning, trace process, collect information, sort and pick, etc., and to write product quarantine inspection, transportation, storage, handover and other information into the coding system, and realize two-way traceability of product production, transportation, storage, handover and other information by scanning barcodes or identifying RFID information, also realize the identification of anti-counterfeiting and safety functions, ensure food safety and drug safety, and ensure the authenticity of products.

INFORM AS/RS + Radio shuttle solution successfully assisted customers in upgrading their automated storage system, solving problems such as tight storage area and low warehousing efficiency, to improve market competitiveness, providing a perfect solution for enterprises that adopt automated storage systems.