In the service case for the Romanian customer Doly Com, the high-efficiency, high-flexibility cold-store storage system provided by ATOMIX not only greatly reduced the enterprise's warehousing investment and operating costs, but also helped promote decent work for workers and ensure product quality and safety. According to Xinhua News Agency, ATOMIX's AI warehouse robotics project in Romania was selected for the "China's Wisdom Benefits the World" case collection.
Understanding the Customer's Pain Points
As a Chinese AI company focused on IoT scenarios, ATOMIX has spent more than a decade continuously exploring the application of AI technology in logistics handling, and its self-developed AI warehouse robots — Pallet Shuttle (four-way pallet shuttle) and AMR systems — have already been deployed in factories and warehouses across multiple industries. As a provider of next-generation smart logistics products and solutions, ATOMIX has now formed three standardized subsystem solutions under Matrix8 — storage, handling and picking — and can offer more flexible, modular options for different application scenarios, for integrators and end customers worldwide to use individually or in combination.
Against the backdrop of AI technology accelerating its empowerment of traditional industries worldwide, ATOMIX began expanding into overseas markets in recent years, setting its sights on the traditional manufacturing and logistics industries that have long depended on manual labor. European customers have likewise felt the huge opportunity created by the labor shortage in the warehousing and logistics industry in recent years. They need to find a supplier that can provide flexible, scalable and sufficiently intelligent automation systems to help them meet the challenges brought by insufficient labor. It was precisely against this backdrop that the two sides responded to each other and hit it off immediately. After a period of familiarization and technical training, the customer's automation lead gained a deeper understanding of ATOMIX's capability boundaries and technical level. Both sides developed greater trust in each other's capabilities in market development, implementation and delivery, and after-sales service.
The Matrix8 Solution Meets Customer Needs
Customer pain points — Doly Com is Romania's largest meat slaughtering and processing enterprise, renowned in the market for its outstanding production capacity and product quality. However, as market demand increases and its business expands, Doly Com also faces challenges such as the low efficiency of its traditional warehouse management system, the harsh working environment for workers at low temperatures, and staff shortages.
Solution definition — after rigorous analysis and the pooled efforts of both sides, we adopted an AI warehouse robotics solution centered on pallet shuttle robots, "filling" the entire three-dimensional space of the warehouse. Compared with bulky traditional machinery, the small robots are more flexible and extensible and can reach almost any corner of the warehouse. What is more, through the management and scheduling of AI software, the storage method, storage areas, outbound sequence and handling efficiency of goods can all be optimized and improved as a whole.
Taking the inventory optimization of Doly Com's meat products as an example, the software system can, according to characteristics such as regular meat products and halal meat products, store different meats in different areas, preventing flavor transfer and other effects between meat products. In addition, Doly Com has certain requirements for near-expiry management of products; the software system can automatically select the goods that need to be shipped out first according to how close the products are to expiry, and monitor and give early warnings for inventory approaching its expiry date. It can also carry out automatic statistical analysis based on historical order data, storing fast-moving categories close to the outbound port and slow-moving categories in higher-level areas, thereby improving outbound efficiency. Every night, the system automatically checks the orders awaiting outbound shipment and uses the night to automatically move the goods that need to be shipped the next day to the outbound port in advance, saving time on outbound handling.
Results are striking — “Compared with the customer's traditional warehouse, storage density can be increased by more than 3 times, and compared with other AS/RS automation equipment, the storage density of the four-way shuttle system is also more than 25% higher.” The person in charge at ATOMIX said that because the system has higher storage density and greater flexibility, it can help the customer reduce investment in warehouse floor area while ensuring product quality and safety. “For scenarios such as cold stores, where operating costs per unit area are high, making full use of storage space brings higher returns to the enterprise.”
AI Systems Improve the Working Environment
Having AI assist humans also promotes decent work for workers. Before the AI robotic system was applied, all operations in Doly Com's warehouse had to be completed by staff wearing cotton-padded clothing in extremely freezing conditions; people working in cold stores over the long term are prone to catching cold and even falling ill, which in serious cases can cause lasting after-effects, and this is very unfriendly to workers' physical and mental health.
In an automated warehouse, by contrast, the inbound receiving, storage, handling and outbound shipping of goods are all carried out by pallet shuttle robots, and operating staff can monitor inventory and robot operating status in real time on the control platform in the central control room. As a result, operators no longer need to enter the -25 °C warehouse in order to manage it.