DC Velocity - February 2019

18 DC VELOCITY FEBRUARY 2019 www.dcvelocity.com
newsworthy
iWarehouse, a fleet man-
agement and optimization
system from The Raymond
Corp., was selected as
the winner of the 2018
Material Handling Education
Foundation Inc. (MHEFI)
Exceptional Contribution
Award. … Transplace, a pro-
vider of transportation man-
agement services and logis-
tics technology, has named
Dayton Freight Lines Inc. its
Regional LTL Carrier of the
Year. This is the first time
Dayton Freight has been hon-
ored with this award. … The
Army & Air Force Exchange
Service has received
the National Defense
Transportation Association’s
2018 Innovative Logistics
Service Award, recognizing
the Department of Defense’s
oldest retailer for outstand-
ing accomplishments in
transportation and logis-
tics. … IoT Breakthrough,
an independent organiza-
tion that recognizes the top
companies, technologies,
and products in the global
Internet of Things (Io T) mar-
ket, has selected Rockwell
Automation as the winner of
its “Overall IoT Company of
the Year” award in the glob-
al 2019 IoT Breakthrough
Awards program. … RLS
Logistics has won the 2018
Wrangler Award from the
Food Cowboy Foundation.
The Food Cowboy
Foundation serves as a part-
ner to the Global Cold Chain
Alliance (GCCA), working to
reduce food loss and waste
by implementing innovative
solutions to redirect food
away from landfills.

accolades

China’s largest retailer, JD.com, has built a “massive smart logistics infrastructure” to serve its 300 million e-commerce customers, and it is now opening that system up to brand partners and other retailers, the Chinese retailer said in January. Calling itself the world’s third-largest Internet company by revenue, JD said it has leveraged its enormous reach to develop a physical order fulfillment and transportation network that it is now offering for commercial use through its “Retail as a Service” (RaaS) model.

Although that network currently operates primarily in China, JD was pitching the idea to North American retailers at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

By enlisting other retailers to use its fulfillment network, JD could be following the same path taken by Seattle-based online retailer Amazon.com Inc., which offers third-party logistics (3PL)-type services to other retailers through its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program. Launched in 2006, the FBA offering helps the parent company achieve greater economies of scale and leverage its volume to extract lower prices from business partners.

The Beijing-based JD started in 1998 as a bricks-and-mortar electronics retailer, launching its online business in 2004. At that time, China didn’t have a well-developed logistics infrastructure, so JD decided to develop its own nationwide in-house logistics network, the company said. Today, that network can deliver over 90 percent of orders same- or next-day, and covers 99 percent of China’s population, according to JD.com.

LEVERAGING ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES

“As China’s largest retailer, JD is in the unique position of being able to research
and develop, and commercially deploy, innovative new technology that is shap-
ing the future of shopping worldwide,” Chen Zhang, JD.com’s chief technology
officer, said in a blog post. “As JD opens its technology up to other companies
and industries, the features that we’ve already rolled out in China—from auto-
mated warehouses to virtual shopping—are going to be enjoyed by consumers
everywhere.”
As an example of its advanced fulfillment capabilities, JD.com said in January
it has launched two “smart delivery stations” in the cities of Changsha and
Hohhot that use autonomous vehicles to perform last-mile delivery.

The stations dispatch delivery robots carrying up to 30 parcels each to locations within a 3.1-mile radius of their home base. Using features like route planning, obstacle avoidance, and traffic-light recognition, the robots navigate autonomously to the correct address. Upon arrival, they use facial recognition technology to ensure the parcel is claimed by the right recipient, JD said. Running at full capacity, these delivery stations can deliver up to 2,000 packages a day.

As JD opens its advanced e-commerce infrastructure to new clients through its retail-as-a-service approach, the company says it intends to support “ bound-aryless” shopping that allows consumers everywhere—not just JD.com’s customers—to be able to buy whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it.

“We’ve spent the last decade building up advanced technology, logistics, supply chain, and other capabilities,” Kenny Li, a JD vice president, said in a video. “We are now sharing this technology and infrastructure with a broad range of partners …. We have worked with thousands of offline store partners to enable them with our technology, logistics, marketing, and other capabilities.”