From the previous days, a quarter of the company's employees worked from home, and in these days, only a quarter of the entire company can come to the office to work on-site. Since March, due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the number of employees who can come to work at the headquarters of Jiangpu Road of SAIC Anji Logistics has decreased day by day.
When the epidemic pressed the pause button for Shanghai, the pace of SAIC Anji Logistics was not hindered. While doing a good job in its own epidemic prevention work, SAIC Anji Logistics protects the logistics supply chain of customers with digital intelligence, and still continuously exports SAIC cars to the world.
Digital intelligence technology empowers "unmanned office"
"The implementation of regional closure management in Puxi is imminent, and all colleagues have to work remotely. However, this does not have much impact on our production and scheduling work. Zhu Weidong, general manager of the digital intelligence technology department of SAIC Anji Logistics, told reporters.
SAIC Anji Logistics is a leading enterprise in the vehicle logistics market, with a market share of about 30%, and the total global transportation volume of complete vehicles exceeds 9 million vehicles in the whole year, which is much higher than SAIC's production and sales plan in 2022. How can such a huge volume of vehicle logistics be supported by an empty office?
Digital intelligence technology is indispensable, especially the intelligent scheduling product IDTMS (intelligent scheduling and transportation management system), which has made great contributions to the realization of unmanned management and intelligent scheduling.
"In the industry, in the past, vehicle logistics scheduling relied on manual multi-level scheduling, which not only required a large number of dispatchers, but also everyone was scheduled according to their own experience, and it was impossible to achieve the precipitation and optimization of scheduling experience." Zhu Weidong introduced to reporters, "We implement the IDTMS project, 50% of the scheduling work can rely on the system to automatically dispatch. In addition, we have also developed a large number of digital tools based on the system, whether it is the operation management of our operation end, or the driver's end of the order, client query, there is a corresponding APP entrance, all business can be operated online, so working from home has no direct impact on us. ”
The unsolvable puzzle makes the "Alpha Dog" come
In the process of in-depth understanding of IDTMS, the reporter felt that it was too much like an "alpha dog". Like the "alpha dog" who seeks victory on the Go board, IDTMS is always looking for better vehicle logistics solutions.
Zhu Weidong explained: "Just like when we buy something on Taobao, we definitely hope that logistics is cheap and fast. The same is true for vehicle logistics, but the characteristics are very different from FMCG logistics. ”
According to reports, FMCG logistics single goods are smaller in volume and lighter in weight, generally taking the trunk line transportation from point A to point B, and the difficulty lies in the stowage plan, that is, how to fill the car and use the full capacity. However, for vehicle logistics, a large plate truck loaded with 8 commercial vehicles, a Ro-Ro ship loaded with thousands of commercial vehicles, the loading scheme is not complicated, but the line scheme is much more complicated than the trunk line transportation in the field of FMCG, and the difficulty of scheduling lies in this.
For example, in the field of vehicle logistics, the lowest cost solution is water transport, but it takes the longest time; road transport is the fastest, but the cost is also high. In order to meet the needs of customers for fast and cheap transportation to the greatest extent, vehicle logistics often adopts a combination of "public iron and water" (road, railway, waterway). Which distribution node to carry out secondary loading and unloading and reasonable connection is one of the most important rule conditions that need to be considered by IDTMS.
In addition to the conventional conditions of the lowest possible cost and the fastest possible speed, the reality is often more complex. Wind and rain block traffic, sudden traffic accidents lead to highway closures, and changes in the production capacity of OEMs affected by the epidemic and lack of cores, resulting in fluctuations in national transportation capacity resources... These are all considered by IDTMS and become constraints of the system.
"At present, there are more than 100 constraints in the rule pool of IDTMS, many of which are deeply customized according to the special industry characteristics of vehicle logistics. This is a problem that cannot be solved by human beings. Hundreds of constraints, calculated by dispatchers, can never be calculated as the optimal solution, so machine learning and artificial intelligence must be used. Zhu Weidong said.
"Zero dispatcher" is just around the corner
This powerful intelligent scheduling system comes from the technical accumulation of the digital intelligence technology department of SAIC Anji Logistics over the years. Since 2014, SAIC Anji Logistics has been aiming at regional intelligent scheduling and trying to empower traditional TMS (Transportation Management System) with machine learning neural network algorithms.
"At that time, our goal was to manage according to each region of the country, make good use of transportation companies with advantages in various regions, and achieve regional intelligent scheduling." Zhu Weidong said.
After years of research and development and iteration, in 2017, IDTMS realized semi-automatic regional scheduling, piloted in 12 districts across the country, which greatly improved the efficiency of SAIC Anji Logistics' vehicle logistics and transportation, saving a lot of labor. However, SAIC Anji Logistics did not stop there, and after the realization of semi-automatic scheduling, the plan of "zero dispatchers" was put on the agenda.
"Just as humans can't understand the 'alpha dog's chess path,' but the 'alpha dog' always wins, we believe that for IDTMS, a lot of human intervention is unnecessary and may even be wrong." Zhu Weidong pointed out, "So we have always hoped that we can carry out a comparative test of fully automatic scheduling and continue to iterate towards the goal of 'zero dispatchers'." ”
It is reported that in May this year, SAIC Anji Logistics will for the first time pilot intelligent scheduling without human intervention in a large region in China, and will be fully implemented by IDTMS. This year, SAIC Anji Logistics also plans to launch the IDTMS system in Europe and Mexico to promote the application of intelligent scheduling to the world. Vehicle logistics "zero dispatcher", the distance to become a reality is no longer far away.
Smart solutions in the automotive sector beat the global giants
The results of IDTMS are a microcosm of the digital intelligence of SAIC Anji Logistics. Through the accumulation of experience in the automotive field, SAIC Anji Logistics has exported its digital and intelligent capabilities to more enterprises. It is reported that as of now, saicel passenger car Lingang factory digital twin warehouse, power ST OTD transparency and other projects, is provided by SAIC Anji Logistics technical support, to help achieve data landing, improve the factory production planning and personnel scheduling coordination ability, as well as before, during and after the management capabilities.
In addition to SAIC's internal, SAIC Anji Logistics has also exported intelligent solutions to new car-making forces. At the upcoming new plant in Hefei, SAIC Anji Logistics' customized LES (Logistics Execution System) information solution beat global software giant M and management giant D. "What they value is that our system has accumulated experience in vehicle manufacturing and logistics, which is an advantage that the two competitors of M Company and D Company do not have." Zhu Weidong said.
It is worth mentioning that relying on the ability of digital intelligence, SAIC Anji Logistics has not only completed the tasks of customer service and supply assurance, but also freed up spare energy to actively give back to the society. Since the outbreak struck Shanghai in March, SAIC Anji Logistics has actively responded to the urgent needs of the government and the community, undertaken a large number of tasks of transporting drugs, medical devices and civilian biological resources, and its subsidiary TNT Huayu has also sent 51 and 144 young volunteers to Huacao Town, Minhang, where the company is located, to help the local epidemic prevention and control and nucleic acid screening work, so that responsibility and great love can surge together with logistics in and out of Shencheng.