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JD.com closer to fully automated warehouse with Japanese partner

CHINA's No 2 e-commerce company, JD.com, continues to take steps to automate e-commerce by opening an "unmanned" parcel sorting centre in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province.

This move, according to its website, follows JD.com's alliance with China's Inspection and Quarantine Association to expedite customs clearance for imports into China.

Another partnership with Japanese logistics company Yamato Holdings is to build a cold-chain logistics network to advance JD.com's AI innovation.

The two companies plan to develop technology for unmanned warehouses, automated vehicles and big data technologies.

This suggests, according to China Daily, an ongoing effort from JD.com to utilise "smart" logistics developments to compete with China"s No 1 e-commerce giant, Alibaba.

The Kunshan sorting centre is completely automated - from parcel selection and sorting to loading and unloading trucks, using automated, guided vehicles, China Daily reported.

Current sorting capacity is as high as 9,000 parcels per hour, and could be increased by four times that rate, the article stated.

Implementing automated systems via artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and robots "greatly improves operation efficiency," JD Logistics' head of research and development Cheng Yan told New York's Air Cargo World.

"Our robots can pick at five to six times the speed of manual picking, reaching as many as 3,600 picks per hour." JD.com's automated guided vehicles also increase efficiency as they "automatically figure out when more efficient routes are available, and map them out on their own."