Project Background
ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology Co., Ltd. is a professional warehousing and distribution service provider under ZTO Express, offering one-stop warehousing and logistics solutions for e-commerce customers relying on ZTO Express's strong logistics network. With the rapid development of the e-commerce industry, characteristics such as fragmented orders, diverse SKUs, and high fulfillment time requirements have become increasingly prominent, and traditional manual sorting modes can no longer meet business needs.
Especially during major promotional events like "Double 11" and "618", order volumes explode exponentially, and traditional sorting methods face efficiency bottlenecks: slow manual sorting speeds, high error rates, and rising labor costs. ZTO Cloud Warehouse urgently needed an efficient, precise, and intelligent order sorting system to improve fulfillment capabilities and ensure customer experience.
Customer Requirements
ZTO Cloud Warehouse set clear intelligent upgrade goals:
- Achieve a three-in-one vertical layout integrating sorting wall, packing station, and outbound conveyor to fully utilize warehouse space
- Support secondary sorting functionality to meet the refined processing needs of complex orders
- Light-guided packing to reduce operational difficulty and minimize human errors
- After packing, automatic conveyance to DWS system for scanning and outbound processing, achieving full automation
- Significantly increase order processing capacity to handle peak order volumes during promotions
Solution
Bdaitec customized a smart sorting system solution based on ZTO Cloud Warehouse's business characteristics and site conditions.
Core Equipment
- Smart Sorting WallAdopting multi-layer vertical design, a single sorting wall can process dozens of orders simultaneously. The light system precisely guides placement positions, improving sorting efficiency by 5-10 times
- Integrated Packing StationSorting wall and packing station integrated design. After sorting is complete, items go directly to packing, reducing handling steps and improving operational continuity
- Vertical Conveyor SystemThree-layer vertical conveyor layout. After packing, parcels automatically enter the bottom conveyor line, forming a closed-loop workflow with sorting layer and packing layer
- DWS Outbound SystemDynamic weighing and scanning integrated machine, automatically collecting parcel information and interfacing with express systems, achieving paperless outbound processing
System Highlights
Three-in-One Vertical Layout: Sorting wall, packing station, and outbound conveyor adopt an innovative three-layer vertical structure design. Upper sorting area, middle packing area, and lower conveyor area. Space utilization increased by 60%, with shorter operational paths and higher efficiency.
Secondary Sorting Capability: The system has built-in secondary sorting functionality. Parcels requiring re-sorting are automatically diverted to designated areas, supporting complex operations like order merging and splitting to meet diverse e-commerce fulfillment needs.
Intelligent Light Guidance: Each compartment on the sorting wall is equipped with LED indicator lights. The system automatically calculates the optimal sorting path, and operators simply follow the light guidance for placement. The light system reduces error rates to below one in ten thousand, and new employee training time is shortened to 1 day.
Project Results
After the project was put into operation, ZTO Cloud Warehouse's order fulfillment capability was significantly improved:
- Overall operational efficiency increased by 300%
- Labor costs reduced by 60%
- Sorting error rate reduced to below 0.01%
- Daily order processing during promotions exceeded 100,000+
- New employee training time shortened from 7 days to 1 day
The successful implementation of this project has established an intelligent benchmark for ZTO Cloud Warehouse in the e-commerce logistics field and provided a replicable solution for subsequent automation upgrades at multiple distribution centers.