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AGV, unmanned stackers, elevators... In the 10-story warehouse, the warehousing and outbound operations of materials and accessories are carried out intensively in a completely "dark" state. Compared with the traditional warehouse management system, the application of the intelligent three-dimensional warehouse that operates almost "in the dark" has increased the efficiency fourfold, saving more than 30 million yuan each year.

As demand changes, the server manufacturing industry faces the challenge of reducing costs and increasing efficiency

Reducing costs and increasing efficiency has become one of the core development strategies of all industries today, and this is also true for the manufacturing industry.

At the same time, for the server industry, as a new round of AI wave sweeps the world, the demand for servers as the underlying support for AI computing power in various industries has also shown explosive growth. Trendforce data shows that global AI server shipments will be 1.205 million units in 2023, and shipments are expected to reach 2.369 million units in 2026. The compound annual growth rate is expected to reach 25% from 2023 to 2026.

In the context of a surge in demand for servers, due to the different needs of each company and the different uses of servers, a high degree of customization is required for servers. Lu Jian, general manager of Inspur Information's production department, told Titanium Media APP that with the diversification of market demand and the increase in personalized demand, higher requirements are also placed on the server manufacturing industry. Servers have gradually shifted from the original small-batch, large-volume manufacturing model to a multi-batch, small-batch, multi-variety material support model. "Today, we need to adopt a large-scale customized agile manufacturing model to meet users' needs for agile server delivery." Lu Jian said.

Take Inspur Information as an example. According to statistics, Inspur Information currently has 200 products and 115,000 configurations. In the manufacturing process, it requires a large variety of material support. With the increase in the degree of customization, more than 80% of the production orders are small customized orders of less than 5 servers. In addition, the user side has higher and higher requirements for product delivery cycle, with an average delivery cycle of 5 to 7 days. "This puts higher requirements on the production cycle and material export time." Lu Jian emphasized.

In this context, a larger, more complex and more agile warehousing system is needed to cope with the new challenges brought by the industry, while promoting cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the server manufacturing industry.

"Software and hardware integration" - how smart warehouses are "made"

In the face of the above challenges, Inspur Information adopted a self-built approach and built the industry's largest server intelligent three-dimensional warehouse. The warehouse covers an area of ​​12,000 square meters and is 24 meters high. In the process of building the intelligent three-dimensional warehouse, Inspur Information has given full consideration to both software and hardware.

On the hardware level, building a three-dimensional warehouse first requires comprehensive consideration of the size design of the basic storage unit, which includes the size of the shelf and the size of the stacker. As well as issues such as warehouse space utilization. "After comprehensive consideration, Inspur Information adopted two basic storage unit designs, 1.4m×1.2m pallets and 0.8m×0.6m×0.35 material boxes," the person in charge of the Inspur Information Warehouse told Titanium Media APP, "Among them, pallets are used to carry large-sized materials, and material boxes are used to hold small-sized bulk materials."

Based on this, the intelligent three-dimensional warehouse also divides the storage area into two parts, with 37 shelves in the material box area and 10 shelves in the pallet area.

Closely packed shelves

After considering the design, because the "black light" mode is adopted, the hardware selection also needs to be carefully selected. It is reported that in terms of AGV, the AGV equipment of Inspur Information Intelligent Stereoscopic Warehouse is at the leading level in the industry, and the stacking machines, sensors and other equipment are also domestic first-class brands.

AGV unmanned vehicle

Titanium Media APP learned that the entire warehouse uses a total of 12 pallet stackers, 5 material box stackers, 6 elevators, more than 40 AGVs, and more than 2,000 AGC points.

Stacker shuttles through the shelves

It is worth noting that because of the "black light" mode, there is no need for manually driven forklifts to enter the site, so the warehouse adopts a narrow design that can only accommodate one material box/pallet to pass through, further improving space utilization. "The leading intensive design makes the effective storage capacity reach 2.2 times that of traditional shelf storage." Lu Jian told Titanium Media APP.

In addition to careful design at the hardware level, software is also the key to whether a smart warehouse is smart.

Based on the original supplier, Inspur Information adopted a highly customized software development method. In response to this, Lu Jian told Titanium Media APP that when selecting suppliers, Inspur Information paid the most attention to customized development capabilities, "because the requirements of the intelligent warehouse management system are very 'specific', and directly using a software cannot meet the requirements well. If a system is used 'hard-and-fast', it will eventually become a situation where people serve the system, which is something Inspur Information does not want to see."

As Lu Jian said, the customized system can indeed be better integrated with its own business and more smoothly adapted to specific business scenarios. "We have refined all the complicated processes and put them into the system, which will greatly improve efficiency."

In the process of building an intelligent three-dimensional warehouse management system, Inspur Information has fully connected eight major systems including the warehouse management system WMS, ERP, and intelligent manufacturing system MES, realizing a fully automatic flow from outbound demand to operation. The algorithms for specific material storage, material access, automatic distribution and other links are integrated with Inspur Information's business experience, further improving the efficiency of inbound and outbound warehousing.

From customer orders to production orders, and then to production material preparation orders, the entire process is fully automated. Currently, the WMS system can handle 82 business scenarios and will integrate multiple priority factors to sort and configure 500 inbound and outbound documents.

Taking the warehousing process as an example, the traditional warehousing process requires manual warehousing, and management personnel are required to manually sort out different materials, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive. In addition, storage is often disorganized, resulting in chaos in the overall warehouse management, and inefficiency in the warehousing, inventory and other links.

Through the WMS management system, assisted by algorithms, scientific and unified planning of material storage is carried out. "Different storage strategies will have an impact on the efficiency of warehouse delivery. For example, if the same type of materials are stored in a distributed manner, multiple stackers can deliver materials simultaneously during delivery, thereby improving efficiency." Lu Jian introduced to Titanium Media APP.

During this process, the WMS system will automatically weigh and measure the incoming materials, and make real-time decisions and determine the storage location based on the weight, size and other information of the materials, combined with the material's historical usage and storage status in the warehouse.

Cost 30 million yuan/year, efficiency increased 4 times, unmanned operation on the way

It is based on this "soft and hard combination" intelligent three-dimensional warehouse management system that the operation of the entire warehouse has achieved cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

According to the budget, the application of this smart warehouse can save 30 million yuan in operating costs annually; in terms of efficiency improvement, through preliminary rehearsals, simulation and other tests, as well as nearly two months of practice, the overall warehouse operating efficiency can be increased by about four times.

Specifically in the scenario, in the distribution link, after the application of AGV unmanned delivery, the delivery can be completed in 3 minutes at the fastest, and the overall efficiency is improved by 65%; in the outbound link, compared with manual forklift outbound, the efficiency is improved by nearly 10 times after using stacker, "on average it is controlled within 1 hour, and the fastest material outbound can be completed in 5 minutes," Lu Jian told Titanium Media APP.

At the same time, according to Inspur Information statistics, since the intelligent three-dimensional warehouse was put into production, the server production cycle has been significantly shortened, and the emergency order production cycle has been shortened by more than 20%.

(This article was first published on Titanium Media APP, author: Zhang Shenyu, editor: Gai Hongda)

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