Warehouse and distribution logistics for chain restaurants is characterized by a high degree of order fragmentation, pronounced seasonality and strong sensitivity to delivery timeliness. As a result, relying solely on large amounts of manual labor for picking and order verification makes it hard to meet chain restaurant companies' requirements on cost, efficiency and fulfillment accuracy, and at every peak period temporary workers still have to be added to cope with the surge in business volume.
Against this backdrop, the chain restaurant giant drew on ATOMIX's artificial intelligence and robotics technologies to carry out automation and intelligent upgrades across its warehouse logistics operations. For this chain restaurant customer's business characteristics — high inbound and outbound volumes and a considerable share of outbound shipments involving depalletizing down to the case and split-case picking down to the item — ATOMIX designed an upper-level storage, lower-level picking dense storage solution. The automated pilot warehouse deploys a total of 170 pallet shuttle storage locations and 60 AMR storage locations, all built on core proprietary software and hardware products: 3 pallet shuttles, 5 AMRs, 1 lift and 1 software system, supporting inbound flows of more than 50 pallets per hour and outbound picking flows of more than 200 cases per hour. The ground floor serves as the high-frequency outbound and cross-docking staging area, while the upper levels form the dense storage area for pallet shuttles. The pallet shuttles handle inbound putaway, replenishment and tallying; the AMRs support inbound transfer, goods-to-person picking and outbound, pallet consolidation and stocktake; the lift helps the shuttles change levels efficiently; and the intelligent software system dispatches all the logistics equipment. This solution is a typical application of ATOMIX's innovative hardware and software integrated logistics solution (AS/RS+AMR+AI).
From the project team's arrival on site to the successful completion of acceptance, the automated pilot warehouse took only 38 days. This chain restaurant customer is renowned in the industry for its stringent supplier selection standards. ATOMIX implemented and launched the project smoothly in a short period, passing the dual tests of capability and efficiency, and ultimately passed acceptance; the customer has now formally begun the full automation retrofit of this logistics base. Winning recognition from an international giant demonstrates ATOMIX's technical strength and delivery capability in serving the world's leading foreign enterprises.
As verified by the customer, the automated pilot warehouse delivers the following tangible economic value:
1. Denser storage locations: more than 60% more storage locations than a beam racking solution;
2. Higher operational efficiency: inbound and outbound efficiency improved by more than 50%;
3. Greater system stability: intelligent software dispatches logistics robots to work 24/7; compared with manual operations, it is safer, more stable and lower cost.
