Case Study

The Customer

The company was founded 72 years ago and has become the largest Japanese apparel manufacturer & retailer and one of the world’s five biggest specialty fashion retailers. With locations in USA, Canada, France, Germany, UK, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Australia, and other important markets in Asia, the company employs over 30,000 people worldwide.

Challenges & Demands

The project took place in Shanghai in the company’s main distribution center. The two-storage warehouse is responsible for clothing delivery to stores. The distribution center needed to realize over 250 daily shipments, handling nearly 500,000 pieces outbound per day. Achieving high-density storage and meet the vast daily delivery demand is an enormous challenge. The project team evaluated a large number of automation solutions available on the market. For this project, the warehouse was divided into several sections based on different functions. The second storage section should meet the demand of high storage capacity and realize fast picking. Another big challenge was to find an automation solution that can recognize and pick both carton boxes and totes of different sizes. Essentially, the company needed to automate 90% of its operations, increase storage density, improve inbound and outbound efficiency, achieve mixed recognition of carton boxes and totes, move and pick multi-size carton boxes and totes, and reduce labor costs.

Customer Value

• Storage density – growing vertically

The second storage section covered a total area of 7,800 square metres. With HAIPICK A42N solution, the customer was able to take full advantage of its warehouse’s storage capacity by increasing shelving space vertically, increasing storage density by 60%, and providing 42,000 storage locations.

• Picking efficiency – HAIQ intelligent software

HAIPICK A42N solution uses self-developed HAIQ intelligent software, allowing the robots to identify and locate items faster and accurately. Picking efficiency increased 7 times compared to manual operations, reaching total inbound + outbound efficiency of 2,800 cases/hour.

• Reduced Labor Costs – 100% autonomous operation

For this project, 130 HAIPICK A42N robots were implemented, realizing a fully autonomous operation, no human labor, and significantly reducing costs involved. The robots docked directly with conveyors and different functional sections, achieving a non-stop operation.

• Mix-picking of carton boxes and totes – a revolutionary function

By providing mix-picking of carton boxes and totes, the company significantly reduced customized containers’ costs, delivering a highly flexible solution meeting the company’s business requirements.

Innovations of HAIPICK A42N Solution

The lifting function of HAIPICK A42N allowed it to reach up to 4.5m high, taking full advantage of the vertical space available in the warehouse, increasing storage density by 60%, A significant improvement compared to a manual operation where the height of the worker limits the maximum high of the shelves.

The intelligent picking function of HAIPICK A42N allowed it to pick items faster and more accurately greatly improving inbound and outbound efficiency, providing 42,000 storage locations, and increasing the picking efficiency 7 times compared to manual picking.

Many warehouses use one type of case (container) to store goods in their facilities, resulting in limited flexibility to deal with other types of items and packaging. In this scenario, a warehouse must customize everything to this one case, resulting in higher costs. The HAIPICK A42N solution allows warehouses to handle totes and cartons of different sizes through its 3D visual recognition. This feature recognizes the type of container and its size without the need for codes. It significantly reduces the costs of customizing containers delivering flexibility, meeting various business requirements.

With HAIPICK A42N solution the company achieved 100% autonomous operation without the need of human.