They’re already using…
UAV logistics?
Lu Zhou’s casualness about this shocked Wang Wei. Wang Wei was so surprised he didn’t know what to say.
Now that Lu Zhou offered to take him for a tour, he obviously wouldn’t refuse. He agreed without hesitation.
“Please show me around!”
He stood up from his chair.
Lu Zhou looked at how anxious Wang Wei was. He then smiled and nodded. He called over the reception assistant and said, “Tell CEO Chen that I’m going to give CEO Wang a tour of the factory. I’ll be back in the afternoon.”
“Okay, Academician Lu.”
The assistant left the room. Lu Zhou looked at Wang Wei and spoke with a smile.
“Let’s go then.”
…
The factory Lu Zhou mentioned was located in the Jinling high-tech zone, next to the entrance from the highway and the railway freight station. It was regarded as one of the biggest companies in Jin Ling City.
Actually, it was CEO Liu’s factory.
Ever since Star Sky Technology’s investment, Zhongshan New Materials had relied on strong technical support from Star Sky Technology. They received orders from East Asia Energy and the electric vehicle industry. They went from a small local materials company to a leader in the field of carbon materials processing.
This was all because of the advancements in science and technology.
Liu Wanshan totally enjoyed the technological dividends. He was a “hardcore fan” of Star Sky Technology. When Star Sky Technology first proposed to help automate industrial logistics for his factory, Liu Wanshan agreed without hesitating.
And now, the first industrialized logistics system was a great success. Zhongshan New Materials was the new standard in lithium anode materials processing and was a technological backbone for the entire Jin Ling City.
Their completely automated material distribution factory maximized the efficiency of the production line.
The kind of work that originally required 20 low-skilled workers, now only required an educated engineer and a group of automated equipment, which was controlled by cloud servers. The difference in cost was substantial.
“This is the factory I’m talking about.”
Wang Wei took a step forward and looked at everything in front of him. He was in disbelief. He took a while to absorb everything before he spoke.
“… This is incredible.”
He was speechless.
The small and flexible AGV logistics vehicles smoothly traveled through the factory, carrying boxes of goods on top of them. Six-rotor drones roared and flew by in the air, completely replacing the manual workers.
The entire factory was like a monster, the logistics vehicles and drones were like blood cells flowing in blood vessels. The individual workshops were like the organs of the monster.
Goods moved from one production line to another, from one workshop to another. Every gear was running at maximum speed, every production link was so efficient. Even the airflow seemed like it was planned in advance.
In fact, it was.
Not just the temperature of the air, but also the gas flow rate per unit time, and even the PM2.5 in the workshops were strictly limited to a certain value.
Because of these strict standards by Zhongshan New Materials, they had the highest yield rate of lithium anode materials produced in the world.
Unless there was a systematic error that couldn’t be solved automatically, there was no need for any workers. The maintenance of equipment such as drones and logistics vehicles was done outside the factory. The maintenance of the workshop production equipment was mostly completed by AI-controlled machines.
What did industrial upgrades mean? What was smart manufacturing?
This factory was the definition of industrial upgrades and smart manufacturing!
This was not the first time he felt the important role of science and technology in industrial production. However, nothing he witnessed in the past even came close to this. Wang Wei finally understood the changes technology brought to the world, and what it meant for the future.
Not just that, but he finally understood why Lu Zhou said that his problem wasn’t a problem at all.
He could even begin imagining AGV logistics vehicles traveling through the logistics center and a group of AI-controlled electric drones unloading goods from airplanes or large trucks into logistics trucks. Then, delivery drones would be responsible for door-to-door delivery. The packages would be delivered directly to the balcony or pick-up spot at the customer’s home.
Wang Wei gulped; he spoke with excitement.
“How much is this system… approximately?”
“That depends on the needs of the customer.” Lu Zhou looked at the drones traveling through the factory and said, “We have two standards, one is for small business owners and the other is for large business owners. The design for small businesses is focused on the optimization of logistics links between the raw materials and the output of finished products. The design for large businesses is mainly aimed at optimizing the logistics links within the production line.
“Actually, after hearing your problems, I think neither of these systems is suitable for you. What you need might be a set of dedicated logistics systems for package delivery services in densely populated cities.”
Wang Wei nodded.
“You’re right.
“Our long-term goal for this intelligent logistics network is to integrate automation and AI in the entire logistics distribution chain. Just like I said earlier, the large vehicles handle the long roads. Then the package is delivered to the customer using the drones on board. The drones then fly to a drone charging farm. Additional backup drones will help logistic vehicles.”
In fact, this drone delivery plan was exactly the same as the paper Lu Zhou published nine years ago. However, this was not easy to achieve. There were many problems that had to be solved.
For example, the live calculation of the UAV route, how to determine the most efficient and safest delivery route, etc. This might not sound complicated, but in reality, it was quite a difficult problem.
First of all, the routes of the drones were not on a 2D plane; it was on a 3D space. Secondly, the sheer amount of volume made the problem much more complicated.
For example, in Beijing, the annual delivery volume was nearly 2.2 billion packages. This translated into a huge amount of packages every day. The entire logistics network would need tens of thousands of drones for support. The distribution plans and routes of these drones had to be calculated by computers.
It seemed like only Star Voyage One could solve this problem.
After hearing Wang Wei’s words, Lu Zhou thought for a moment and said, “Actually, you can think about outsourcing the entire intelligent logistics network to us, including the drones used in the distribution link and the drone charging farm. We have a professional team capable of doing this task, and it is easier to solve this problem as a whole than to solve the individual problems you will encounter.”
Wang Wei paused for a second and hesitated.
“That… isn’t the best idea, right? We already have business partners for equipment such as drones and logistics vehicles. We have also signed long-term strategic cooperation agreements. If it is possible, I hope you can accommodate our request and focus on the intelligent logistics network design. So far, we are quite satisfied with the products they provide, so there is no plan to change suppliers for the time being.”
Changing suppliers was not a trivial matter.
It involved many problems.
For a large-scale enterprise such as Shunfeng, it could affect the whole business. Even a small change in the logistics distribution link could cause unpredictable impacts on existing operations.
At the very least, changing business partners would require a few internal meetings. He couldn’t just agree to Lu Zhou on the spot.
What really made Wang Wei hesitant was that Shunfeng had already invested a lot of money in this project. If he outsourced the entire project because of some bottlenecks, he would feel like his initial investment was wasted. A classic case of sunk cost fallacy.
Also, Shunfeng was a large enterprise with a market value in the hundreds of billions of yuan. Outsourcing a key technology to other people made Wang Wei feel “unsafe”.
Lu Zhou knew what Wang Wei was thinking. He contemplated for a second and spoke.
“It depends on how you look at this problem. The industry is affected by the economics of scale. The same is true for scientific research. Letting professionals handle the professional work will be more efficient than doing it on your own. I won’t force you to adopt our standards, but as a scholar, I am simply trying to find the best solution.”
Wang Wei was still hesitant when he said, “Do you guys still produce drones and logistics vehicles?”
Lu Zhou: “You’re worried about our production capacity?”
Wang Wei didn’t say anything.
Lu Zhou smiled and spoke.
“We actually don’t have a factory and production line for drones and logistics vehicles. But we are in the era of intelligent manufacturing. This is not a problem at all.”
Seeing how Wang Wei still didn’t understand, Lu Zhou spoke.
“If you’re curious, I can show you something.”
He took a tablet from his assistant, then handed it to CEO Wang.
Wang Wei was muddled as he stared at the tablet. Lu Zhou spoke.
“You can select the product parameters you need, then upload your requirements to the server. We will do our best to achieve your requests. This process will take about two hours, so we will have to wait for a while.
“We can grab some lunch, then come back.”
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