Text / Liu Jun, China Construction Bank Suzhou Branch
The current situation and predicament of precious metal vaults of commercial banks
The precious metal vault of the commercial bank is the business library of the bank's physical precious metal business, and its business varieties include gold and silver. The management of physical precious metals includes the inspection of physical precious metals in the warehouse, storage in the warehouse, inventory, inspection, delivery, distribution, return and other businesses. The precious metal vault is a part of the treasury of commercial banks, and compared with the cash vault, it has more particularities, which are mainly reflected in the following aspects.
First, there are many types, because a large number of precious metal products are issued every year, and the cumulative inventory has hundreds of varieties, far exceeding the number of types of cash.
Second, the inventory is large and the storage time is long, including the precious metal products kept by customers, the longest time in the warehouse is more than 10 years, and the daily management cost increases simultaneously.
Third, there is a lack of unified standards, product specifications are very different, different manufacturers, products, have their own different product specifications and packaging, and the certificate does not provide identification and anti-counterfeiting technology and corresponding operating specifications.
Fourth, due to the wide variety, the workload and complexity of distribution have increased greatly, and the error rate has also increased.
Fifth, the storage period is long, the lack of unified standards and strict identification specifications, and there is a greater risk of internal control operation.
In view of the management of precious metal vaults, some commercial banks use electronic safe deposit boxes and other methods for storage, but they are mainly manual operations, which do not fundamentally solve the above problems. To this end, we have united the industry's senior bank vault management experts, senior financial technology experts, robotic automation and artificial intelligence and other relevant personnel to set up a precious metal smart vault research and development project team, squatting in the precious metal vault, carefully studying each process and link of precious metal circulation, analyzing and statistically operating data for many years, strictly controlling the relevant systems and regulations of the vault, sorting out the needs of the precious metal vault, and launching the smart precious metal vault project.
Design principles for smart vault projects
Taking into account the peculiarities of the vault premises, we first clarified the basic principles of the project.
1. Security compliance. Security is the top priority in the construction of the whole system, and the project must meet the relevant security standards of the vault and the requirements of the bank's internal system, including the document system of the commercial bank, the People's Bank of China and the public security system.
2. Reliability and emergency. It is necessary to choose reliable products and mature technologies, have adaptability and fault tolerance when the system is abnormal, and have a manual emergency response plan to ensure the normal operation of the vault business.
3. The allocation library is fully automated and unmanned, and the administrator is avoided from touching precious metals as much as possible. Realize automatic identification of precious metal shape, certificate (OCR), pallet elements and other information. Verify the authorized operators, automatically realize intelligent warehousing, intelligent identification and storage cabinets, intelligent item handover, and operation. Realize the automation of precious metal allocation in business institutions, the intelligence and automation of inventory and inventory, and the visualization of operation and management data.
4. Technological advancement and practicability. First of all, the operation index is not lower than manual operation, and secondly, advanced robot and automation technology, including image recognition, intelligent robotic arm, three-axis robot and big data, deep learning and other technologies are adopted to ensure the stability and reliability of the whole system and adapt to the needs of future technology development.
5. Informatization requirements. All precious metals require products to be stored and data to be stored in the system. For the volume and weight of oversized, gift boxes loaded into temporary storage cabinets, and those that have not been used for a long time are transferred to the storage cabinets, and the data of the temporary storage cabinets and storage cabinets are also entered into the management system. The whole process of warehousing, warehousing, inventory and acceptance is recorded, so that it can be queried at any time, and the report can be output, and the management system of the smart vault is interconnected with the new generation system and the network demand expansion system.
Technical parameters of the smart vault
The goal of the construction of the smart vault is not only to achieve automation, visualization and informatization, but also to achieve higher performance and efficiency indicators than the manual mode after the launch of the smart vault, and to reduce labor costs. To this end, we developed the relevant performance index requirements of the vault through on-site observation of the vault, interviews with the vault operators, and analysis of data over the years.
1. Inbound speed. Warehousing includes a process of pallet precious metal placement, transportation, visual identification, and transportation into the cabinet, and the average warehousing speed is required to be no less than 45 pieces/minute.
2. Delivery speed. With the outlets as the distribution unit, automatic pickup, consolidation and packing, requiring an average of 2 outlets to complete the packings per minute.
3. Precious metal storage capacity. The storage area is composed of a plurality of single cabinet storage cabinets, each storage cabinet can place a total of 40 pallets, each tray can be divided into 30-48 small grids, each small grid places a precious metal, so a single cabinet can store 1200-1920 small grids. It can also be adjusted according to the height of the storage area to change the number of single containers. It is planned to be equipped with 8 standard storage cabinets, so that up to 15,000 precious metal products can be stored.
The storage cabinet has built-in visual recognition equipment and robotic arms. The visual recognition equipment can realize the identification of precious metals and certificates, and the robotic arm will draw the precious metals and certificates from the pallet to the conveyor belt when leaving the warehouse, and the conveyor belt will transport the precious metals to the bagging machine for bagging.
4. Inventory and check speed. The storage time of one pallet is about 40 seconds, and 8 groups of storage cabinets are checked at the same time, and all products are checked in about 30 minutes.
5. Real-time monitoring and alarming. In the process of operation, the smart vault should monitor the precious metals in operation in real time, and if the precious metals are found to be abnormal, the operation should be suspended and the treasury keeper should be alerted immediately, including: damage, abnormal identification of the certificate number, abnormal size or weight characteristics, etc.
6. Information management system. The precious metal custody smart vault is mainly responsible for the centralized control of the business and the integrated cabinets, and has the functions of data collection, report statistics, operation monitoring and fault alarm. The vault system has interfaces with the banking business system and other related systems, realizes the docking with the core system, automatic information interaction, software realizes the whole process verification and real-time early warning, and the software realizes business visual management, supports multi-dimensional display of information such as business processes, operation status, abnormal events and other information in the form of graphics and reports, and can realize the visual monitoring of robot operation tracks.
The realization of the smart treasury
According to the design requirements, the equipment is divided into four modules: intelligent warehousing module, precious metal distribution module, intelligent inventory module, visualization and management function module. The specific requirements are as follows.
1. Smart Treasury Zoning Requirements. The precious metal vault is divided into 5 areas, namely: precious metal pretreatment area, precious metal storage and distribution area, manual auxiliary distribution area, sealing area, and consumables area. The precious metal pre-treatment area is the area where precious metals are sampled and pre-treated. The precious metal storage and distribution area is the area where the precious metal is stored and distributed and bagged. The storage area is placed with a single and large number of precious metals, which usually do not need to be opened for inventory, and the opening authority is set to the director of the vault and the treasurer to operate at the same time. The manual auxiliary distribution area is to place gift bags, gift boxes and other precious metals that are too large to be placed in the storage cabinet, and the door opening authority is set to the warehouse keeper. The consumables area is the area where pallets outside the warehouse are stored.
According to the preliminary demand analysis and on-site investigation, we have refined the project and implemented the technology, and designed and implemented it in full accordance with the needs and technical requirements of the project.
The overall area planning and deployment (as shown in Figure 1) includes the precious metal pretreatment area (1), the precious metal storage and distribution area (2), the storage area (3) (4), and the consumables area (5).
Fig.1 Floor plan of the area
2. Storage area and automatic storage cabinet. A total of 8 storage cabinets are configured in the storage area, each single cabinet is part of the left and right pallet storage area, the middle is the transportation channel and the hoist, the top of the cabinet is installed with a shadowless light source and a visual photography system, as well as a precious metal grabbing system and a conveyor belt for the warehouse, etc., which can realize the inventory warehouse, the inventory check, the platter, and the image recognition of precious metals under the control of the system, and has the counterfeiting function of the size, shape characteristics, etc. (as shown in Figure 2).
Figure 2 Device deployment
Each storage cabinet is composed of a hoist, a storage cabinet, a pallet, a conveyor belt, a three-axis mechanical intelligent robotic arm, a precious metal grabbing arm, a vision camera and a shadowless light source. The precious metal is stored in the pallet, and the pallet is transported to the designated position by the hoist, and the actions such as visual photography, lighting, and handling are automatically realized (as shown in Figure 3).
Figure 3 Storage cabinet structure
The 8 storage cabinets can be operated independently. With the cooperation of the hoist and camera of the storage cabinet, the automatic inventory and inventory operation can be realized. Manual inventory inspection can transport pallets to the loading table for manual inspection by inventory inspectors. The operator can view the inventory process and information of each storage cabinet in real time on the operation screen and the large screen.
Except for emergency response or the requirements of the treasury checker, there is no need for the treasurer to enter the vault storage area and operation area for daily work.
3. Warehousing and allocation. When warehousing, it is necessary to first model the product data of each variety, digitize the name, model, attributes and image visual library of the product, standardize the packaging of the precious metals in the warehouse, and cut the package even if it is packaged. If the inventory is not packaged, the certificate and the physical precious metal need to be consistent with the standard packaging and plastic packaging and rewarehousing.
According to the requirements of the product placed on the tray, and then enter the warehousing automation link, the warehousing platform can automatically set the pallet number, the attributes of the precious metal in the tray, the quantity and the correctness of the position, etc., while realizing the data system binding, its visual requirements can correctly identify the code of the certificate, can accurately identify the pallet RFID number, etc. Once the pallet enters the storage area, it can be accurately placed in the storage area.
In order to achieve fully automated and efficient matching requirements, each storage cabinet is equipped with independent visual recognition robots, independent hoists, three-axis robotic arms, etc., and operate at the same time, forklifts, three-axis robotic arms and hoists are stereotyped products, with high maturity and good stability, and can ship 500 pieces of precious metals per hour, which can avoid errors and repetitive work of human factors, and fully meet the peak demand for daily life, small long holidays and Spring Festival holidays.
In the process of outbound and allocation, according to the list of precious metal transfer instructions issued by the business system, the system will automatically transport the precious metal from the storage area to the operation area, and realize automatic allocation according to the list, and seal the output into bags or plastic packaging. The outbound data can be formed into a report in the system, and the large screen displays the library process, progress and other information. Figure 4 shows the inbound and outbound process.
Figure 4 Inbound and outbound processes
4. Automatic inventory storage. The system sets up a keyboard library function, after the completion of the business every day, the warehouse keeper needs to take inventory of the stored precious metals, and the system will carry out the inventory operation on the tray with in and out of the warehouse according to the principle of moving the disk, and the display screen will display the status and results of the inventory in real time. And synchronize the data to the management system, and realize data review and synchronization with the new generation system.
5. Smart checking. There are 2 types of search modes for intelligent database searching. (1) One-click database search. When checking the warehouse with one click, 8 sets of hoists will extract the precious metal from the shelf at the same time, take pictures and identify and check, and then put them back in place, and upload the photos and identification results.
The specific process: the hoist drags the pallet out of the storage cabinet and lifts the pallet to the top to take a photo, the visual recognition equipment visually identifies the precious metals and certificates in the tray, compares the identification results with the inventory data, and uploads the data to the system.
(2) Manual checking. Inspectors can selectively check the precious metal category or pallet number. The storage cabinet will transport the pallet to the storage gate, where the inventory personnel can check the precious metal, and return the pallet to the storage cabinet after manual verification. The system records the audit records and results and uploads them to the system.
Epilogue
In the first half of 2022, the requirements and design of the project were launched, and the research and development was immediately organized, and the installation and commissioning of the project were completed in 2023. Warehousing and warehousing, etc.) are higher than manual work, the error rate is low, and the overall business operation time is shorter than the existing manual operation time, and it can be connected with the new generation system interface of the head office and other related intelligent needs, and the equipment operation indicators meet the design requirements. At the end of 2023, the system successfully passed the acceptance.
(This article was published in the second half of March 2024)