Recently, at the second AI Logistics Open Class sponsored by the Artificial Intelligence Logistics Industry Alliance and undertaken by Megvii Technology, the old cannon of the logistics industry - the Chinese chief scientist of the Fraunhofer Logistics Research Institute in Germany, the Chinese dean of the Sino-German Intelligent Technology Doctoral Research Institute, the professor of Tongji University, and the doctoral supervisor Fang Dianjun, combined with his observations on intelligent logistics technology in China and Europe for more than 30 years, shared his insights on the development genes of logistics and supply chain, the development trend of logistics technology, and the opportunities and challenges of China's logistics and supply chain.

The Evolution of Logistics Technology: Towards Intelligence and the Silicon Economy

Germany has always been at the forefront of the World Bank's rankings on logistics performance evaluation systems. In Fang Dianjun's view, the strength of German logistics benefits from the mastery and compliance of logistics and supply chain development genes. He believes that logistics mainly includes physical dimensions and information dimensions, with the development trend of logistics digitalization and intelligence, the importance of information dimensions is becoming increasingly significant.

Fang Dianjun believes that the logistics and supply chain development genes are: the whole process, systematic (logistics has the characteristics of cross-enterprise, cross-industry and even cross-border, so the whole process, systematic is very important), customer-oriented (to pay attention to customer service), flow principles (physical and information must flow), efficiency maximization, cost optimization.

According to these logistics development genes, the Fraunhofer Logistics Institute in Germany analyzed the technical development path of logistics and believed that the evolution of logistics technology is from mechanization, automation, intelligence to silicon economy (silicon ecology).

Fang Dianjun introduced that the important carriers of the silicon economy are the intelligent Internet of Things (AIoT) and the intelligent handling robot (AMR), AMR is not only small in size and light in material, the most important thing is that each robot has its own intelligence and realizes intelligent interconnection (AIoT), and the devices can cooperate autonomously. If a task is difficult, the robot can automatically call on another robot to complete the task together.

Pictured: Megvii self-developed SLAM navigation intelligent handling robot

Logistics technology trend: the whole process of digitalization, intelligence

Fang Dianjun believes that entering Industry 4.0, the development direction of intelligent logistics technology is mainly in the information dimension, and will develop in the direction of visualization, transparency, predictability, intelligence and autonomy. Among them, the digitization and visualization of the whole process is the basis of Industry 4.0; transparency can reveal the technical and management problems hidden in the process and seek solutions; analysis and big data mining based on historical data are convenient for controlling the present and predicting the future; intelligence and autonomy are the development direction of logistics industry technology.

Specifically, there are ten major trends in logistics and supply chain trends. First, the hardware is becoming more standardized and modular, and the software tends to be personalized and intelligent: to achieve the goal of supplier integration expansion, collaborative planning and management, reducing complexity, and reducing procurement costs. Second, lightweight and group intelligence: the volume of robots is getting smaller and smaller, the materials are getting lighter and lighter, and large-scale cluster operations are inevitable. Third, highly flexible automation: robots are developing from traditional AGVs to multi-functional handling robots, and even climbing and handling robots; intelligent robots must be all-round in the future, both on the ground and on the shelves, both in the warehouse and to the production line.

Figure: Digital twin of the Megvii River Map system

Fourth, based on the Internet of Things to promote the whole process of digital intelligence: such as trucks equipped with sensors to measure the maturity of fruits and vegetables, timely discovery of fruits and vegetables that may be broken, to provide real-time information for scheduling. Fifth, digital twins: integrate the physical dimension and information dimension of logistics, and make intelligent logistics go to a higher level through technologies such as AI. Sixth, the smart supply chain cloud platform promotes the formation and development of the supply chain ecosystem: the smart supply chain cloud platform integrates the upstream and downstream enterprises of the supply chain, forms a network system of the overall value chain, and will have the characteristics of full-process digitalization, transparency based on big data and prediction algorithms, and intelligent decision-making of AI in the future.

Seventh, production and logistics continue to integrate: Germany is studying the future of automobile manufacturing, exploring how to make logistics and production more automatic docking. Eighth, man-machine collaborative intelligent logistics system: for example, robots can autonomously navigate and avoid obstacles in warehouses, independently carry goods and return empty pallets, and can also take workers to locations that need manual selection and complete logistics operations with workers. 9. Logistics system based on artificial intelligence technology. 10. Blockchain technology: Applied in logistics and supply chain, it can ensure transaction security, data property rights and traceability.

China Logistics realizes lane change and overtaking: to create a healthy and intelligent logistics development ecosystem

Compared with the development of The logistics industry in Germany, Fang Dianjun believes that China's logistics and supply chain have great development opportunities: first, new infrastructure and dual-cycle strategy, bringing new growth to logistics and supply chain; second, Chinese society is more open and inclusive to the digital age, and enterprises are willing to try new models, new products and new services; third, China is in the world's first echelon in the fields of 5G, narrowband Internet of Things, industrial Internet, artificial intelligence, etc., which will promote the development of logistics and supply chains; The new business model in the digital era can bring new business opportunities to agile and flexible Chinese entrepreneurs, and provide opportunities for China's logistics and supply chain lane change and overtaking; fifth, digital intelligence technology is expected to greatly improve China's logistics technology manufacturing capabilities and improve the service level of logistics and supply chain service industries.

Of course, China's logistics and supply chain also faces some challenges: first, gross profit margin and market standardization need to be further improved; second, we need to pay more attention to differentiated competition, improve business focus, and avoid vicious price competition; third, we need to strengthen cooperation to form a win-win ecology and accelerate market response speed, rather than mainly relying on their own production and manufacturing; fourth, logistics technology and management talents with practical experience are scarce, and mutual mining of talents can easily lead to rapid growth in labor costs; fifth, it is necessary to further strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights. Make enterprises more willing to continue to invest in technology research and development and talent training.

Fang Dianjun said that to create a healthy intelligent logistics development ecosystem, each enterprise is doing a solid job in its own core technology, which is conducive to China's logistics and supply chain in the era of digital economy.

Figure: Member units of the Artificial Intelligence Logistics Industry Alliance jointly established by Megvii and partners from all walks of life

As the AI company that understands logistics best, Megvii is committed to becoming the world's leading provider of intelligent logistics products and solutions with AI technology as the core, and the application of AI technology to the logistics field will bring broad development space. For example, the application of computer vision to logistics scenarios, automatic identification of goods on the shelves, judgment of the location and status of goods, to ensure the accuracy of inventory and the accuracy of pickup, these are all innovative research and development of Megvii in hardware + AI, hoping to contribute to the development of China's logistics and supply chain lane change.